AI does not raise a multiple. An operating model does.
I recently spent time in a room full of private equity operators, and the conversation kept landing in the same place.
Everyone has bought AI. Almost nobody has turned it into enterprise value.
Here is what I told them. AI does not raise a multiple. An operating model does. A pilot inside one portfolio company is a science project. The same capability, captured as a reusable operating layer and pushed across the portfolio, is a value creation thesis.
The pattern that works is not more tools. It is one governed foundation per company, built on how that business actually runs, with the firm's own playbook captured as skills on top. Document the operations. Find the vital few bottlenecks. Automate against a baseline you can measure. Then do it again at the next company without starting over.
That is what shows up in diligence and at exit: margin that improved because the work changed, not because someone bought software.
If you are an operating partner trying to get leverage past hand-touch, that is the whole game. Build the operating model once. Reuse it across the portfolio. Let the wins compound.
#PrivateEquity #ValueCreation #AIOperatingModel #OperationalDueDiligence #PortfolioOperations