Private Equity
AI Strategy Day
8am-5pm | 15 September 2026 | London
Turn AI Ambition into Measurable Advantage
The flagship full-day forum for private equity leaders operationalising AI across the firm and the portfolio. It is not a traditional conference: concise talks, grounded case studies, peer-only discussion and hands-on workshops, designed so you leave with practical next steps, not just ideas.
Focus
Turn AI interest into scalable, measurable impact across your firm and portfolio
Practical
Practical playbooks, real cases, and working sessions you can apply immediately
Accessible
A clearer path from “where do we start?” to confident action in a trusted setting
Independent
Explore AI’s potential with confidence with an open, trusted network and no hidden agenda
Why Attend: from capability to advantage
This day is built to give private equity leaders practical command of AI, not theory. Every session is rooted in the realities of deal-making and portfolio value creation, and designed so you leave with things you can use.
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See what's actually working, and what to avoid, from firms already deploying AI across private equity and venture capital.
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Go deep on your world, with parallel tracks for the deal side and for portfolio value creation, so the content fits your role.
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No sales pitches. Every contributor, practitioner and partner alike, is there to show how it's really done, grounded in real implementation.
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Leave with usable frameworks, clear next steps, and peer connections you'll keep using long after the day.
Who’s Attending?
This event brings together 200 senior professionals from over 100 leading mid-market firms and expert partners to explore the realities of AI in private equity. Attendees include Partners, Operating Partners, Investment Directors, CTOs, AI Operators, and value creation leads actively shaping portfolio performance.
This is a highly curated group, designed to encourage honest, peer-level conversations, not product pitches or surface-level introductions. The result is a day of valuable discussion, shared experience, and useful connections for leaders in private equity, venture capital, and asset management.
Our Partners
Visionary Partners
Activation Partners
Insights Partner
Innovation Partners
Meet the Speakers
Partner, ECI Partners
Suzanne Pike
Suzanne is a senior investment professional focused on identifying high-growth businesses, supporting M&A strategies and building corporate finance relationships. She has also been at the forefront of ECI's AI initiatives.
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Head of Data Science, BC Partners
Benjamin Grether
Benjamin leads data and AI value creation across private equity investments. He bridges investing, technology, and operations to drive smarter decisions, scalable transformation, and measurable business impact.
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Global Head of Product & Data, LSEG Risk Intelligence
David White
David is an innovative, articulate and highly accomplished product and data leader, with a proven track record of delivering value through strategic opportunity, operational execution and strong business partnership.
Senior Vice President - Portfolio Operations
PSG Equity
Paul Williams
Paul is a seasoned product & technology leader with 20 years of experience leading large teams across disciplines, methodologies, industries and the full lifecycle of development and delivery.
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Professor of AI & Society, Kings College London
Kate Devlin
Kate is an AI and human-computer interaction expert, academic, writer and keynote speaker, exploring responsible technology and the future of human relationships with AI.
PX Director Product, Tech & AI, Main Capital Partners
Jason Raats
Jason oversees the integration of cutting-edge technologies and AI-driven solutions to enhance performance across Main and its portfolio of 55+ Enterprise Software companies, drawing on experience in finance, consulting, data science, and software engineering.
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Operating Partner, Quadrivio Group
Francesca Roni
Francesca is a qualified lawyer and Partner at Lifestyle Fund and Lifestyle Fund II, with 10 years’ international experience across luxury and food, and active involvement in leading industry organisations.
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CEO & Board member, Beqom
Lars Dige Pedersen
Lars is a global technology executive with a proven track record of building high-performance teams, driving profitable growth, and leading complex PE- and VC-backed technology businesses through transformation and scale.
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Director & AI lead, Agathos
John Butterworth
John is an experienced investor and advisor, specialising in UK SMEs, technology, AI, governance and value creation, with previous experience at Connection Capital and KPMG.
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Founder & CEO, Scale To Value
Elizabeth Gooch MBE
Elizabeth is an award-winning technology entrepreneur, Chair and Board Advisor who helps founders build scalable, investable and valuable businesses through stronger strategy, leadership and commercial fundamentals.
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Investment Director, Three Hills
Fred Kinsman
Fred is an experienced investment professional with a strong track record across direct lending, private debt, and leveraged finance, supporting businesses and transactions across the UK, Europe, and Australia.
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Principal, Partnership - Europe, Ramp
Isabelle Fayad
Isabelle is a partnerships leader with experience spanning sales operations, financial institutions and private equity. Based in London, she leads European partnerships and helps ambitious companies navigate the future of finance.
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Founder & CEO, Virgil
Crawford Hawkins
Crawford spent six years on Elliott Management’s special situations team, later founded and ran a Tiger Management–seeded fund, and then founded Virgil, combining that investing experience with AI.
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Co-founder & CCO, Attercop
Tiffany Willcox
Tiffany is a recognised AI governance and data strategy expert, she helps private equity firms and portfolio companies scale AI with confidence by aligning data, governance, and operational delivery to drive measurable business value.
Director - AI practice, Crosslake Technologies
Brandon Maddick
Brandon drives AI strategy, product innovation, and enterprise transformation by combining product leadership, go-to-market expertise, and consulting experience to deliver scalable solutions and measurable business impact.
Partner, EY-Parthenon
Corey Dixon
Corey brings deep experience across strategy, technology and AI, helping organisations turn ambitious transformation goals into real business value through practical innovation, analytics and digital transformation.
Outline Agenda
Networking breakfast
8.00-8.30
Start the day with decent coffee and conversations among peers who work in your world.
Welcome & PE AI Benchmarks
8.30-8.45
Where the Room Stands: What the Latest Benchmark Tells Us About AI in PE
A fast-paced view of what our latest benchmark of the private equity community reveals about the state of AI adoption, where the field has moved, where ambition is outrunning readiness, and where the biggest gaps between the best and the rest are opening up. The data behind the day's conversation, in ten minutes.
Steve Budd, Founder, AI Pathfinder
Opening panel
8.45-9.25
First Principles: Where AI Advantage Actually Comes From
AI advantage is not simply a technology question. It comes from staying close to customer needs, rethinking products and business models, and having the organisational discipline to adapt as the economics change. In this opening session, two business leaders explore what really gives companies the AI-edge.
Speakers:
Dr Lars Pedersen, CEO, Beqom
David White, Global Head of Product & Data, LSEG Risk Intelligence
Moderator: Isabelle Fayad, Principal, Partnerships, Ramp
Case studies
9.25-10.15
The Advantage Showcase: Real Practitioner Stories
Four practitioners, twelve minutes each, one common frame. A deal-side leader, a portfolio operator, and a leader with a measurable ROI story walk the room through what they built, how they got people to actually use it, and what changed as a result. No hypotheticals, no roadmaps, just the specifics of what they did and what they learned.
Moderator: Crawford Hawkins, Founder and CEO, Virgil
Deploying AI to Find Cross-Portfolio Savings
At BC Partners, Benjamin led the development of an AI solution that analyses portfolio-company spend, identifies cross-portfolio cost-optimisation opportunities and matches relevant spend against existing discount agreements. He will explain what was built, how its economics compare with the traditional approach, and how it creates a repeatable portfolio-wide capability.
Speaker: Benjamin Grether, Director, Head of Data Science, BC Partners
Diagnosing and Driving AI Adoption in Portfolio Companies
At Main Capital Partners, Jason leads Main Amplify, an in-house programme supporting AI enablement across the portfolio. He will share the process they follow and the concrete results from portfolio companies so far.
Speaker: Jason Raats, PX Director Product, Tech & AI, Main Capital Partners
Bespoke AI Without a Build Team: How One Fund Built Core Operational Tools In-House
At Agathos, John has built the kind of AI-powered fund operations infrastructure that until recently would have required a large budget and a dedicated build team All built internally, in three months, by one person. John walks through what he built, why he started with the "headaches" rather than the glamorous use cases, and what a lean, in-house approach now means for how any fund can operate.
Speaker: John Butterworth, Director & AI Lead, Agathos
Giving Finance Its Time Back: The ROI of AI-Enabled Reporting
What happens when AI takes repetitive reporting work off the finance team’s plate? Francesca Roni shares how Quadrivio is using Claude Cowork to shorten reporting cycles, improve the quality and consistency of outputs, and free people to spend more time on analysis, judgement and supporting business decisions. A practical look at where the value is showing up, how to measure it, and how AI could reshape the role of finance itself. (awaiting approval)
Speaker: Francesca Roni, Partner at Lifestyle Fund, Quadrivio Group
Fireside chat
10.45-11.10
The Missing Middle: Turning AI Adoption Into Value
AI activity is not the same as value. Drawing on ECI’s seven-year journey from machine learning to agentic workflows, Suzanne Pike and Brandon Maddick challenge assumptions shaping AI strategies today: that adoption should be bottom-up or top-down, that hours saved equal ROI, and that every use case deserves to be built. They explore the importance of data, governance and the operating discipline required to turn experimentation into better decisions, stronger workflows and measurable business outcomes.
Speaker: Suzanne Pike, Partner, ECI
Moderator: Brandon Maddick, Director, AI Practice, Crosslake Technologies
Strategic roundtables
11.10-12.00
From Insight to Action: What Counts as Meaningful AI ROI?
Only 49% of firms in our latest benchmark can articulate a credible ROI case for their priority AI initiatives. In a structured, small-group exchange at your table, chaired by a facilitator, you'll test where you're genuinely finding value, what you're measuring it against, how long an initiative should get to prove itself, and who owns the number. Honest about what's hard to measure, specific about what's working, and everyone leaves with one or two things they'll go and do. All before we take lunch.
Activation workshops
13.00-14.50
In two parallel streams, each running two 45-minute working sessions, you'll dig into how AI is reshaping the two arenas where PE actually creates value: the way your firm works, and the way your portfolio companies work. The stream will depend on your role. Each session pairs a real customer story with a hands-on exercise at your table.
Stream A — PE Workflows
For those focused on how AI is changing the way PE professionals actually work: the analysis, the deal process, the information flow, the daily operating rhythm of the firm.
Workshop 1 - Model ML
Reimagining the Deal Team's Workflow: What Changes When AI Is Woven In
What would you redesign if AI were embedded in the investment process from the start? Starting with a real example from Three Hills, tables choose one part of their own investment process and rethink it from first principles: what could change in speed, quality and output, what information and ownership would be needed, and what would it take to test this different way of working?
Speaker: Fred Kinsman, Investment Director, Three Hills
Facilitator: Tyler Sisk, Product and Growth, Model ML
Workshop 2 - Junior
Rethinking the Diligence Process: Turning Conversations into a Competitive Advantage
What can firms do differently when every conversation becomes a reusable asset? Working from an “IC in two days” scenario, how the diligence process itself should be reimagined now that a different approach is possible, not how AI can assist the process you already run.
Speaker: Corey Dixon, CTO, EY-Parthenon, UK&I
Facilitator: Dimitris Samouris, Co-founder, Junior
Stream B — Portfolio Value Creation
For those focused on how AI creates value inside the businesses you own: the leadership, execution and technical foundations that turn AI ambition into portco outcomes.
Workshop 3 - Attercop
Teach Them to Fish: A portfolio-level playbook for AI that
actually ships
How firms get stalled portcos moving by transferring expert capability and skills to the company, and measuring value on execution. How could you boost AI execution across your portfolio?
Speaker: Paul Williams, Senior Vice President - Portfolio Operations, PSG Equity
Facilitator: Tiffany Wilcox, Co-Founder and CCO, Attercop
Workshop 4 - Codurance
Building Defensibility During the Hold: Where AI Compounds Portco Value
Moats are not always where the sales deck says they are. This hands-on session puts you in the seat of a newly appointed portco CTO: identify which parts of the business genuinely underpin enterprise value, spot the AI claims that would fall apart in exit diligence, and prioritise the first 18 months of the hold. Would your portco's AI story survive diligence at exit?
Speaker: Elizabeth Gooch, NED, Braemar Shipping and Bots for That
Facilitator: Ed Farrow, Principal Consultant, Codurance
Closing keynote
15.10-15.45
It's Not Them, It's You (and the polycrisis)
Prof Kate Devlin's research finds people working around the AI they've been told to embrace in their jobs. Not because they don't understand it, but because they don’t trust it, fear what it means for their work, and are wary of the underlying power shifts. In this closing keynote, Kate explores why this backlash is deepening and what it is really about. What does it take to build the kind of trust that brings people along with you? And how can you prepare your teams for the workplace of the future?
Speaker: Professor Kate Devlin, Professor of Artificial Intelligence & Society, King's College London