AI Readiness & Claims Assessment
Verify the AI in the deal — and find the AI upside after it closes.
Overview
One Assessment, Two Deal Moments
Every CIM now claims AI. Every investment thesis now assumes it. This assessment answers both questions deal teams actually face: pre-close — is the target's AI real, defensible, and affordable at scale, or a demo wrapped in a valuation premium? And post-close — where can AI genuinely move EBITDA or the exit multiple in the company you now own? Fixed price, delivered in 2 weeks to fit deal and 100-day timelines.
Buy-Side
AI Claims Diligence: Is the AI Premium Justified?
Targets increasingly price themselves as AI companies. Very few are. We read the actual implementation — not the pitch deck — and tell you what the AI is worth. The three questions that matter to valuation:
Is It Real?
Is there a production AI system with real usage, or a thin wrapper around a third-party API — or a demo that never left staging? We read the code, the deployment history, and the usage data.
Is It Defensible?
Does the company own the data rights, pipelines, and domain integration that make the AI hard to replicate — or could a competitor rebuild it in a quarter? Model dependency and switching risk, quantified.
Does It Scale Economically?
What does each AI interaction cost at 10x the current volume? We model token, embedding, and pipeline costs against the growth in your investment model — before those unit economics become your problem.
Findings land in deal language: what the AI is actually worth, what it will cost to make the claims true, and what that means for price and terms. Often bundled with a full Technical Due Diligence engagement.
Post-Close
AI Value Creation: The 100-Day AI Roadmap
For companies you already own, the same assessment runs in the other direction: a 2-week evaluation of the portfolio company's data, infrastructure, and workflows that produces a prioritized AI roadmap — ranked by EBITDA impact and exit-multiple contribution, not by what's fashionable.
Data & Infrastructure Audit
Whether the company's data pipelines, storage, and quality can actually support AI features — and the shortest remediation path if they can't.
Use-Case Prioritization by Value
A ranked list of AI opportunities scored on margin impact, feasibility, and data readiness — the first bet, the fast follows, and the distractions to skip.
Cost Modeling & Guardrails
Real unit economics at POC, 10x, and 100x scale, with cost guardrails designed into the architecture so a successful feature doesn't become a margin problem.
Build vs. Buy Analysis
What the portfolio company should build, buy, or assemble — sized against the team it actually has, not the team a vendor imagines.
Phased Roadmap
Milestones, dependencies, resourcing, and decision points the sponsor can hold the management team accountable to.
Execution Option
If you want the roadmap built, we build it — see AI Value Creation. The team that wrote the plan ships it.
Who It's For
Is This Right for You?
- You're evaluating a target whose valuation carries an AI premium and need to know if it's justified
- Your investment committee wants the "is the AI real?" question answered by someone who reads code
- You own a portfolio company with "AI on the roadmap" and no credible plan behind it
- A portfolio company's AI spend is growing and nobody has modeled the unit economics
- Your value-creation plan assumes AI-driven margin improvement and you need it sequenced and costed
Operators welcome too: if you're a company preparing for AI investment — or for a sale where your AI claims will face buyer diligence — the same assessment applies. Start with our free AI Readiness Scorecard.
Timeline & Investment
2-Week Engagement, Fixed Price
Pre-close, two weeks fits inside the diligence window and the output feeds negotiation directly. Post-close, it slots into the first 100 days and hands the sponsor a plan with accountability built in. Either way: fixed price, no scope creep, and findings in dollars — not adjectives.
Have a deal or portfolio company in mind? Book a confidential consultation or email info@techsight.dev.