PE's Repeatable AI Edge

Hi, I’m Lily. I created this PE edition of the AI Dispatch for our growing community of thousands of private equity leaders and portfolio company operators navigating AI implementation.

This week’s theme: Rinse and Repeat.

Private equity built its reputation on one deceptively simple idea: find a formula that works, then run it again. The best operators don't reinvent the wheel at every portco: they refine, systematize, and scale across the portfolio until the edge compounds. AI is now the formula everyone is trying to perfect.

Blackstone and KKR are negotiating one Google agreement to unlock hundreds of companies at once. IBM is handing PE-backed operators a prebuilt AI playbook so no one starts from zero. Mphasis ran its AI thesis through every client conversation until 60% of $2.1B in new contracts came back AI-led. And CareTria took a fragmented patient journey, rebuilt it once with agentic AI, and now runs it across all 50 states.

The rinse is different for every firm. The repeat is the point.

---

What GPs Are Whispering About

Blackstone and KKR Turn to Google for Portfolio AI Access

Blackstone, KKR, and EQT are in talks with Google to secure omnibus AI licensing agreements that would give their portfolio companies direct access to Gemini models, no separate consulting entity required. The structure differs from competing arrangements in the market, offering PE firms a leaner path to AI deployment across portfolios. Google Cloud's Karthik Narain acknowledged the strategic logic plainly: the PE channel reaches customers that even Google's own sales force cannot. For GPs managing software-heavy portfolios under pressure to stay relevant, these agreements represent a portfolio-wide AI infrastructure decision, rather than a company-by-company experiment. Read more →

IBM Makes the Case for AI as PE's Strongest Value Driver

IBM's enterprise AI practice is making a direct pitch to private equity: the firms pulling ahead aren't deploying more AI; they're redesigning how their businesses operate. Drawing on $4.5B in internal productivity gains across 100+ validated workflows, IBM launched Enterprise Advantage, a consulting service that gives PE-backed companies prebuilt AI infrastructure rather than a blank slate. The argument for GPs is structural: an AI playbook that works at one portco compounds across an entire portfolio, turning workflow improvements into repeatable assets and governance frameworks into durable exit value. Read more →

Blackstone Portco Mphasis: 60% of New Deals Now AI-Led

Blackstone portfolio company Mphasis closed FY26 with new contract wins up 68% to $2.1 billion, 60% of which were AI-led, signaling a decisive shift in client spending toward AI-driven work. Q4 alone saw 64% of new contracts tied to AI, spanning banking, telecoms, and payments. CEO Nitin Rakesh credited the company's NeoIP suite and its acquisition of decision-intelligence platform TAP for enabling a move beyond task automation toward AI that reasons across business objectives. For PE operators in regulated industries, Mphasis is demonstrating what an AI-led revenue transformation looks like in practice. Read more →

---

Portfolio Gold

Every week, we’ll bring you a new, real-world example of how targeted AI deployments within portfolios are solving persistent business challenges.

Frazier Healthcare-backed CareTria Uses AI to Build Industry-Leading Direct-to-Patient Platform

Company: CareTria (Frazier Healthcare Partners portfolio company), a therapy initiation partner serving pharmaceutical manufacturers and patients across all 50 states.

Problem: Pharmaceutical manufacturers faced a fragmented direct-to-patient channel: benefit investigations were slow, patient onboarding was manual, and therapy initiation rates suffered as a result. Disconnected systems across demand generation, telehealth, and pharmacy fulfillment created bottlenecks that delayed patients from starting treatment and eroded gross-to-net performance for biopharma partners.

Solution: CareTria acquired an AI-powered digital pharmacy to build a unified direct-to-patient platform. The combined company integrates proprietary agentic AI across the full therapy journey: from provider demand generation and digital patient onboarding to omnichannel engagement, benefit investigation, telehealth, and multi-modal pharmacy dispensing, without requiring manufacturers to manage multiple vendors.

Results:

• 85% of benefit investigations completed automatically in under 60 seconds

• 20% increase in therapy initiation through AI-enabled omnichannel patient engagement

• 90% prescription-to-therapy initiation conversion rate across CareTria’s direct-to-patient platform

---

Lily’s Recommendation Corner

What AI Exit Readiness Looks Like for PE-Backed Companies with Giacomo Sonnino

In this episode of AI & PE: The Future of Value Creation, Giacomo Sonnino, Advisory Director at Charlesbank, breaks down what AI exit readiness actually looks like for PE-backed companies and how the bar has shifted in the last 12 months. Sonnino outlines three levels of AI value creation, explains why companies stuck in pilot purgatory are falling behind, and identifies what "AI theater" looks like during diligence. His sharpest point: finance is no longer a future AI opportunity, it's a proven one, and every CFO needs two answers ready: what AI is doing for the business today, and what the finance function of the future will look like. Listen here →

---

Lily’s Closing Thoughts

The pattern across this week's stories is hard to miss. The firms and portcos generating real AI returns are thinking in systems: asking not just whether AI works here, but whether it can work at the next company, and the one after that. That is what rinse and repeat looks like in practice, and the firms that haven't found their repeatable play yet are falling further behind every quarter they wait.