A deal partner should credit a target's AI claim only against a profit and loss line the target's monthly management accounts already show moving, and carry every other AI claim in the model at zero until a line moves.
Buyers expect to pay more and hold longer. BDO, which sells accounting, tax and advisory services, published its 2026 private equity survey on September 22, 2026, from a May 2026 Rabin Roberts Research poll of 400 U.S. private equity fund managers, deal partners, and operating partners. Of those 400, 82% of respondents expect deal prices to increase during the next 12 months, which the release attributes to tight competition and a shortage of quality assets relative to available dry powder, and 80% of respondents report holding portfolio companies for five years or longer. Of the same 400, 94% report AI fundamentally reshaping their investment thesis, the funds' own use of AI from sourcing to exit. A buyer paying more to hold a company five years should check the claim while the price can still change.
Among CEOs, those with no line to show outnumber those with one. PwC, which sells audit, tax and advisory services, published its 29th Global CEO Survey on January 19, 2026, from 4,454 CEOs in 95 countries and territories, fielded 30 September to 10 November 2025, CEOs of companies of every size and ownership, so the figures describe CEOs at large rather than private equity targets. Of those 4,454, 30% report increased revenue from AI in the last 12 months and 26% lower costs, while more than half (56%) say their company has seen neither higher revenues nor lower costs from AI, while only one in eight (12%) report both of these positive impacts.
The check runs on numbers the data room holds. In week one the deal partner sends the target CFO every AI claim in the management presentation with three columns each: the profit and loss line the claim moves, the tool's go-live month, and the line's monthly figure for the 12 months before go-live and every month since. In week two the target CFO fills them from the monthly management accounts, adds the tool's contracted monthly fee, and names any other change to the line in those months, a site closed, a headcount cut. In week three the quality of earnings firm ties each figure to the general ledger. Take a claim that AI cut accounts payable cost: the lines are accounts payable staff cost and outsourced invoice processing fees. If either fell after go-live and stayed down six months or more, the deal partner credits the run rate the line shows, less any fall the target CFO assigned to another change; if both are flat and the vendor's invoice is new, the claim enters at zero. A claim naming no line enters at zero in week one, and the tool's contracted fee stays in the cost base in every case.
The buyer orders the tie-out and pays from the deal's diligence budget: 12 months per claimed line is added procedures, billed by the quality of earnings firm as a change order to its scope. The buyer's counsel checks the AI vendor contracts, including whose customer data the tool takes, in the legal diligence already running. An operating partner can send the same schedule to every portfolio company at budget, since each already reports profit and loss lines monthly.
Of PwC's 4,454, 22% report an increase in costs due to AI, where a fee in the cost base with no line moved lands, and the schedule enters that claim at zero.
