Private equity insights: 2026 AI Impact Survey Report

Why fund-level AI activity is not moving portfolio company value

Private equity has AI confidence. They aren’t seeing AI returns.

Private equity runs on proof. Every investment thesis is tested before capital is deployed. Every portfolio company is measured against targets that determine whether to scale, restructure or exit. That discipline is what produces returns.

With AI, that discipline has not yet arrived. Grant Thornton’s 2026 AI Impact Survey of 950 business leaders identified a pattern across nine industries, including private equity: The sector is building conviction about AI faster than it is building measurable results.

Across every industry in the survey, organizations are scaling AI without the infrastructure to prove it is working. In private equity, that disconnect runs directly through portcos, where enterprise value is created.

Most firms have not yet built the infrastructure to establish proof at the portco level, let alone across a diverse portfolio.

The governance infrastructure required to produce measurable returns — and the ability to demonstrate that AI decisions are auditable, defensible and producing measurable value — is where private equity trails the cross-industry average most significantly.

PE leads on AI activity, but not on results

PE leaders are confident they understand where AI creates value. More than half cite strategy as the primary driver of AI ROI, three percentage points above the cross-industry rate. Board-level involvement is above average, and 80% are already exploring or piloting autonomous AI. By every measure of intent, PE is leaning in.

But results are not there yet. Only 24% report revenue growth. On AI maturity, 45% are still piloting, 11% above the cross-industry rate. Only 5% have fully integrated AI into operations, compared to 14% across all industries.

Organizations that fully integrate AI are four times more likely to report revenue growth. PE, with nearly half still piloting, is on the wrong side of that line. The difference is that PE operates on a hold period, and the cost of remaining there is measured in exit value, not annual performance.

Private equity leaders say the finance function requires the most focus, enablement or incentives to reach their AI ambition. The conditions inside most portfolio companies explain why. When a PE firm acquires a portco, the finance function is often the first thing rebuilt: a new CFO, new reporting lines and new performance targets. AI is frequently deployed before data definitions are consistent, reporting ownership is clear or anyone has agreed on what AI is supposed to measure.

What is missing is governance: the infrastructure that makes AI outcomes defensible and traceable across both the portco and the fund. Without it, the finance function cannot produce the evidence that investment committees, limited partners (LPs) and eventual buyers will demand.

Scrutiny arrives before governance is ready

Buyers, lenders and LPs are already asking about AI exposure. A portco that cannot answer with documented evidence faces valuation friction that is entirely avoidable. A fund that cannot answer across its portfolio faces the same conversation at a larger scale. Most PE firms are not ready.

In PE, governance means something specific:

• Documented ownership of AI outcomes at the portco level
• Portfolio-wide visibility into what AI is running, who is accountable for it and what evidence exists that it is performing as intended
• Ability to produce auditable, defensible proof that AI-driven decisions can withstand the scrutiny of a buyer, lender, regulator or LP

Only 9% of PE respondents are confident they could demonstrate that within 90 days. That is the lowest rate of any sector in the survey and less than half the cross-industry average.

Additionally, only 7% of PE respondents have a tested AI incident response playbook: defined, owner-assigned and validated through tabletop exercises. PE firms routinely stress-test financial models, simulate downside scenarios and rehearse crisis protocols for operational disruptions. The AI running alongside those systems has no equivalent rehearsal.

The governance requirement is not uniform across a portfolio. Healthcare and financial services portcos carry materially higher AI governance risk than manufacturing or retail assets because of regulatory exposure, fiduciary obligations and data sensitivity. And the stakes are rising: 99% of PE respondents are exploring, piloting, scaling or embedding autonomous AI. But it’s without governance.

Model drift in a portco's revenue projections, unauthorized data access discovered during buyer diligence and cascading workflow errors during a critical growth phase are the specific failure modes that surface when no one has documented who is accountable or how the system is contained.

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Portfolio companies’ challenges do not have a one-size-fits-all solution

The sectors PE holds are not moving at the same speed on AI, and they are not facing the same risks. An operating partner applying a single approach across a diverse portfolio is not managing AI effectively. Each industry — and specific companies across the portfolio — require a personalized approach:

The pattern is consistent: The disconnect between AI ambition and governance is real in every sector, but the shape of it differs. The firms that build governance visibility across their holdings are positioned to answer the questions that buyers, lenders and LPs are already asking. The ones managing AI as a single portfolio-wide initiative are carrying exposure they cannot see until a counterparty surfaces it for them.

Three actions to build portco AI value

The firms that will create measurable AI value for portcos are those that build the infrastructure that turns AI activity into defensible, measurable value.

Grant Thornton is already embedded in this work across PE portfolios. The result is infrastructure where it matters, an operating partner who can walk into any conversation prepared and documented evidence that AI is governed, measured and delivering. That is what protects exit value.

Methodology

Between Feb. 23 and March 18, 2026, Grant Thornton surveyed 950 business leaders, a group restricted to CFOs, CIOs/CITOs, COOs, and VPs, department heads, and directors who report directly to the C-suite. The private equity-specific subgroup comprises 100 respondents. Role-specific findings within the private equity subset of data are directional only.