IVCA Recap: Panel Event ‘Leveraging AI to Transform VC & PE Firms’
October 29, 2025
The IVCA, along with sponsor Ropes & Gray and Baker Tilly, hosted the panel event “Leveraging AI to Transform VC & PE Firms” on October 7th, 2025, moderated by Martin Ruhaak, Partner at Ropes & Gray. The event featured real-world use cases and candid insights from investors who are integrating AI into their workflows, not just investing in AI companies.
The panel was Ryan Beauchamp, Managing Director at GTCR, Jeff Cantalupo, Managing Partner & Founder at Listen Ventures and Paul Hsu, CEO & Founder at Decasonic Venture/Digital Assets Fund. The chat topics included how firms are using AI to improve workflow, strategies in use within portfolio companies, the art of what is possible & next, becoming AI native at the GP level and real-world approaches from active investors.
Below is a brief recap of the event …
PERCENTAGE OF FORTUNE 500 COMPANIES DISCLOSING AI USE
An MIT report showed that 84% of the Fortune 500 are publicly disclosing that they’re using AI in some fashion or another. Most telling about where the industry is right now and where people think of AI, 95% of those disclosures were in the risk factor section of public disclosures. So people view this as an inherently risky opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless, and they are communicating to investors in the same way.
GPs & AI
Very few GPs have indicated they are seeing a financial advantage right now in terms of using AI. It’s very much in the capital intensive phase and very much in the learning phase. One investor remarked it the valley of despair, where people are still learning how to use the technology in a way that can either monetize portfolio companies, find opportunities for GPs, or even things that are more expansive than that.
So for a particular deal and an investment team, they can clones market expertise, so that’s an insightful use of AI clone technology that can be built in-house. It’s constantly updated, and those updates can be applied to investment criteria. So it’s almost like having an investment committee for a solo GP consisting of world-class experts who can help calibrate what greatness should look like.
PRACTICAL USE OF AI IN VC/PE OPERATIONS
As an example, a portfolio company deployed AI agents based on demos a firm gave them of their agents, and that company is seeing 40% reduction in development time, higher quality of code shipped, and a lot of the operational activities internally that became automated. That drives clear capital efficiency across the portfolio. One of many data points to point at in this example is that clearly a firm can build AI to enhance their investment output.
For internal VC/PE film applications, it can increase efficiency. So everything from investment teams to automating NDAs for a legal team. If AI actually brings a solution they haven’t been able to leverage previously its a huge opportunity – either to reduce cost or increase revenue.. For example, a third of portfolio companies that are new acquisitions are using AI co-piloting and reference calls for job applicants … a third are actively starting to deploy it … a third have landed AI solutions that have impacted their bottom line or are changing exit valuations. So there is a need to meet portfolio companies where they are and help them sort of progress along that continuum.
Firms often start by manually understanding workflows, then buy off-the-shelf tools for quick wins, and finally build proprietary tools if needed for competitive advantage.
INTEGRATING VC/PE OPERATIONS IN AI
The belief is that AI is advancing so fast that it’ll eventually figure out your use case by a bigger company solving for it anyway. So you can build internally and you should because you need to understand it. But eventually the people that are building AI from an infrastructure level perspective are likely going to solve a lot of problems anyway.
For example, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) model was created over a weekend. And it did a better job at providing the glimpse at what was needed to capture in a CRM as a consumer investment shop than off-the-shelf $50,000-a-year SaaS products did. It did 80% of what they wanted it to, but that 80% was probably worth dumping the subscription for … saving $50,000 a year.
Right now is the precipice of the AI revolution. It’s a practicality in very specific human domain expertise, in imagination and in the creativity to drive frontier ideas from humans, when paralleled with smart interns in AI. Everyone has to future-proof … they have to take those steps.
ADOPTION AND LEARNING CURVE
It’s starts at the top, leading by example. So much learning can be accomplished watching YouTube videos, X and Threads, listening to experts like Mark Benioff and Jensen Huang. What they say at their keynotes has been so enlightening to understand where the trajectory of this technology is … and the questions always has to be, what have you thought about using it for work? How have you thought about using it for work? And what parts of our process do you think could benefit the most from it?
The discovery session is where to start, and then make it part of internal operations. The other part to think about is based on your strategy or vertical or whatever you’re focused on as a firm, what could you use AI for to give you an advantage in that industry?
If you don’t have anything, it’s actually a great spot because if you gather all the ideas across the firm, can half of those be accomplished if they just had access to ChatGPT? Do you need a third party tool? You know, do you need to build something? They’ll quickly point you in the right direction.
And then if necessary, for example, what can be added is Copilot, Chachi PT and other applications … it can all come from what people were asking for. So the nice thing is you don’t have to answer it like the employees will. Just give them the right forum to collect this information and gather it together.
The next IVCA event – presented by Kirkland & Ellis LLP – will be the 2025 IVCA Annual Awards Dinner on December 8th, 2025 (5:30p-9:30p) at the The Four Seasons Hotel Grand Ballroom, 120 East Delaware Place, Chicago. For details and registration info, click here.