AI Transformation Partner — Private Equity focused

From AI to EBITDA. Finally.

Aikido is the AI Transformation Company with a special focus on Private Equity. We accelerate deal-flow, automate due diligence, and drive measurable value creation across portfolio companies — with a model that ties us to the results.

Book a Strategic Session → Explore AI Agents
Built for
Mid-market PE funds Growth equity Structured family offices Buy & Build platforms
AI-powered analytics dashboard for Private Equity
Day 60 First measurable EBITDA impact
The Context

AI is everywhere. In investment processes, almost nowhere.

GPs who move now build a structural advantage over the next 5 years of deal cycles. Those who wait pay a silent tax: missed deals, slower due diligence, portfolio companies that don't scale.

95%

of GenAI projects fail to generate measurable ROI or never get past the pilot stage

MIT — The GenAI Divide
78%

of Italian CEOs have seen no tangible AI benefits on costs or revenue

PwC — 29th Global CEO Survey 2026
3–7d

average time for a full deal screening in mid-market PE

Industry benchmark — Aikido research

It's not a technology problem. It's a method problem.

A Different Category

We're not consultants. We're not a SaaS.
We're the AI Sensei for Private Equity.

Big4 firms sell hours. SaaS vendors sell licenses. Aikido builds custom AI capabilities on your investment process and portfolio companies — and ties compensation to results.

The Old World

  • Rigid SaaS that asks you to adapt
  • Per-seat pricing disconnected from value
  • Data trapped in the vendor's cloud
  • ROI promised at 12–18 months
  • Consultants who leave decks, not systems

→ Aikido

  • Custom AI agents on your investment process
  • Skin in the game: compensation tied to results
  • Self-hosted available: the infrastructure is yours
  • First measurable impact in 60 days
  • We build systems that remain after us
Two dimensions, one platform

Where We Create Value

Aikido operates on two levels of the fund simultaneously. Same workspace, same knowledge base, capabilities that compound over time.

Level 1 — General Partner

AI for the Fund

We configure specialized AI agents that accelerate deal sourcing, due diligence, investment committee, and portfolio monitoring. Speed, quality, and breadth of coverage the senior team can't achieve manually.

Level 2 — Portfolio Companies

AI for Portfolio Companies

Concrete building blocks that drive operational value creation in portfolio companies. This is where measurable EBITDA uplift is generated — and where our success fee is concentrated.

AI Agents for the Fund

Specialized agents. Configured on your process.

Pre-validated components built on real Private Equity use cases, adapted to your investment thesis, your templates, your proprietary knowledge base.

Deal Sourcing

Deal Flow Intelligence

Automated screening and scoring of inbound opportunities. Filters noise, prioritizes thesis-fit, triggers alerts on weak signals from public sources.

−70% initial screening time
Due Diligence

Automated Due Diligence

Automated VDR ingest, extraction of financial, legal, and commercial flags. Generates a structured first DD memo to review with the team — not write from scratch.

−55% preliminary DD cycle time
Investment Committee

Investment Memo Co-pilot

Drafting of standard IM sections, comparable analysis, sensitivity models, historical portfolio synthesis on similar deals. The analyst reviews, not rewrites.

−50% memo preparation time
Portfolio Monitoring

Portfolio Financial Dashboard

Real-time dashboard across all portfolio companies. Normalized KPIs, anomaly alerts, comparison vs business plan. The deal team sees in 5 minutes what today takes 2 days.

Real-time visibility + anomaly detection
LP Relations

LP Reporting Assistant

Automated portfolio data aggregation, quarterly LP letter drafting, consistent responses to LP data requests. Compliance and tone-of-voice preserved.

−75% LP reporting cycle time
Foundation

Enterprise AI Workspace

The private environment that orchestrates all agents. Centralized knowledge base (RAG), LLM-agnostic, self-hosted available. The foundation you build on over time.

100% data sovereignty, zero lock-in
Portfolio Amplification

From the fund to portfolio companies: where EBITDA is generated.

The real value leap isn't in the fund. It's in the portfolio companies. Six concrete building blocks to drive operational value creation — from SaaS cost optimization to process automation, to impact measurement with OKR logic.

Cost Intelligence

SaaS Cost Intelligence

Audit of SaaS subscriptions across the portfolio company: cost-per-seat analysis, overlap and underutilization identification. Where ROI is higher, we replace with custom AI-based software that cuts recurring costs and boosts productivity.

Automation

Process Automation

Mapping of the most time-, cost-, and resource-intensive processes. Bottleneck identification and AI automation implementation on the highest-impact workflows — from customer service to reporting, order management to quality control.

Integration

System Integration

Already using Microsoft, Salesforce, or a specific ERP? Perfect. We handle the last mile: integrating AI with your existing stack, connecting data, automating workflows. We don't replace — we amplify what already works.

Productivity

AI Upskilling Program

Hands-on training — not theoretical. We bring everyone to the same AI competency level, then amplify the champions. Measurable individual productivity: each person uses AI for what their role actually needs, not as a gadget.

Governance

AI Policy & Governance

Uniform AI governance framework across all portfolio companies. Shared policies on usage, security, and compliance — defined at holding level, implemented operationally. Clear standards for every portfolio company's management team.

Measurement

AI Impact Measurement

OKR framework applied to AI: numeric, measurable metrics that CxO management can verify. If the company already has OKRs, we assess AI impact on existing ones. If not, we identify simple, concrete KPIs tied to the P&L.

Skin in the game.
For real.

Part of our compensation is tied to the concrete value we generate in portfolio companies: measurable cost reduction, FTEs freed up for core activities, acceleration of processes that directly impact the P&L.

It's a structural alignment: our upside exists only if the portfolio company's EBITDA grows. For real. In a traceable and auditable way.

"We don't sell licenses. We sell the EBITDA we unlock together."

Sovereignty & Security

Your AI. On your servers. With your data.

Confidential CIMs, non-public financials, LP information. Aikido is built with an architecture that respects PE data sensitivity: self-hosted available, zero lock-in, the asset you build stays yours.

Private Infrastructure

Self-hosted option. Your data never leaves your perimeter.

Private Knowledge Base

RAG on your CIMs, IMs, deal history. Accessible only by authorized team members.

LLM-Agnostic

GPT, Claude, Gemini, or frontier models: use the best one for each task.

Zero Lock-In

If you leave, you take everything: agents, knowledge base, infrastructure.

The Method

Three phases. Sixty days. Zero surprises.

A structured path where every milestone is observable by the team. Weekly demos, concrete deliverables, binary decisions at every gate.

01
Weeks 1–4

Foundation

Critical process discovery, knowledge core mapping, private AI Workspace deployment, automation opportunity report with impact estimates.

02
Weeks 5–8

Acceleration

Development of priority agents on your investment process. Weekly demos, internal AI champion training, first agents in production.

03
From Day 60

Portfolio Scaling

Roll-out to first portfolio companies, activation of success fee model, continuous monitoring and capability expansion over time.

Expected Results

KPIs tracked. Not estimated.

Benchmarks from Aikido building blocks and industry standards. We define KPIs ex-ante and track them week by week.

−70%
Deal Screening

Initial screening time for inbound opportunities

−50%
Investment Memo

IM preparation cycle time

15–25h
Time Liberation

Hours/week freed per senior resource

Day 60
First Impact

First measurable EBITDA impact in production

Why Aikido

Six structural reasons. Not promises.

01

PE-native, not enterprise-adapted

Our building blocks are born from Private Equity. Investment process, LP reporting, portfolio monitoring are our primary use case — not a corporate adaptation.

02

Real skin in the game

Part of our compensation is tied to the concrete value generated in portfolio companies. Our interests are structurally aligned with yours — not declaratively.

03

Product-grade speed

Pre-validated building blocks eliminate the "build from scratch" phase. First agent in production in 30–45 days. First measurable EBITDA impact by day 60.

04

Zero vendor lock-in

Self-hosted available. If you exit the relationship tomorrow, you take everything: agents, data, knowledge base. Trust is built by giving freedom to leave.

05

Founder-led, partner-grade

Founders are on every project. 20+ years across management consulting, corporate finance, and digital transformation. We speak CFO, Investment Committee, and Operations.

06

We build, not leave decks

The deliverable is a production system, not a report. The internal team is trained to use it, evolve it, and extend it to the next portfolio companies.

Behind Aikido

Concrete as entrepreneurs, disciplined as CFOs.

We don't come from the enterprise world. We come from the P&L. We've built companies, managed M&A, signed invoices. When we talk about EBITDA, margins, and working capital, we're not reciting a script — we're describing our last twenty years of work.

Raffaele Curci
Raffaele Curci
Managing Partner

Twenty years translating strategy into operational results: first at BizUp and Alkemy leading transformation projects, then as co-founder of Epicode. Knows Italian companies from the inside — where decisions are made and where execution happens. Pragmatism, speed, margin focus: three non-negotiables.

Claudio Vaccaro
Claudio Vaccaro
Managing Partner

Serial entrepreneur (Blazemedia, uLead, Holding Fucina) and investor in Private Equity funds and startups. Corporate finance and CFO-level background, direct experience in M&A and value creation. He's been on the other side of the Investment Committee table — knows what it truly takes to close a deal and generate returns.

Frequently Asked Questions

The objections PE raises.
Our direct answers.

The questions below are the real ones we get from those evaluating a collaboration: data security, measurement, timelines, exit. We answer them here without hedging.

Our data is highly confidential — CIMs, portfolio financials, LP information. How do you ensure security?
The self-hosted option keeps all infrastructure within your perimeter: data never leaves your servers, doesn't transit through third-party clouds, and stays under your IT and compliance control. The knowledge base is a private RAG, agents operate in a dedicated workspace with granular role-based authentication. We don't share or resell data, and any LLM used is queried in modes that don't train on your inputs.
How do you concretely measure the EBITDA increment to which you tie your success fee?
We define it before starting, not after. During assessment, we identify the operational KPIs that drive EBITDA — labor costs, cycle time, error rate, recovered revenue, time-to-cash — and establish the pre-implementation baseline. The measured delta post-go-live is tracked transparently: shared dashboard, joint validation, agreed cap. No vanity metrics, no attribution smokescreens.
How long does it truly take before seeing operational results?
Four weeks for Foundation (private workspace active, automation opportunity report delivered). Four more for Acceleration (first agents in production, team training). Day 60 is our commitment for first measurable EBITDA impact — not a PoC, not a demo, but an operational agent that moves numbers on the P&L. Weekly demos throughout: no surprises at the finish line.
Can we start with just one portfolio company instead of the fund?
Yes. Many funds prefer to test value creation first on the "ideal" portfolio company — the one with the most receptive management and clearest processes — before extending. It's excellent de-risking logic: the first implementation generates the internal case that justifies roll-out to the rest of the portfolio and the fund's deal team.
What happens if we decide to end the relationship?
You take everything. If you chose the self-hosted option, the infrastructure is already yours and continues to work. We hand over code, documentation, knowledge base, agent configurations. No exit fee, no forced migration, no data hostage. It's the foundational principle behind Aikido: trust is earned by giving freedom to leave.
Do you work with Italian funds or international ones too?
Our sweet spot today is Italian mid-market funds with portfolios in Italy or southern Europe — we have operational roots here and know the ecosystem. We're selectively opening toward European funds with a southern Europe focus, where our cultural and linguistic proximity to portfolio company management becomes an asset.
How do you integrate with the tools we already use (CRM, ERP, BI, data room)?
Natively, where possible (Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft 365, major ERPs, standard virtual data rooms). Custom, where needed. The AI Workspace is designed to talk to existing systems, not replace them. No "rip & replace": AI becomes the intelligence layer on top of the stack that already works.

Resonates? Let's take 30 minutes.

A 30-minute Strategic Session. We understand your investment process, your priorities, where AI can move the needle. Zero commitments — you walk away with a clear point of view, not a quote.