AI Forces Private Equity Back to Fundamentals

The brief

Michael Bruun, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Global Co-Head of Private Equity, explains how aligned incentives and a broad network help compete for middle-market investments.

Higher rates have brought private equity back to cash-flow fundamentals, making hedging, resilient business models, and experienced crisis leadership more valuable than complacent assumptions.

Bruun says AI changes diligence by elevating technology stacks and data quality—factors often missing from financial statements but central to future value creation.

Across portfolio companies, AI adoption starts with a CEO treating it as a strategic imperative, then spreads through experimentation in customer acquisition, insight generation, and operations.

The episode’s sharpest tension is that AI may amplify human talent, not replace it: culture and a change mindset increasingly determine who captures its leverage.

Bruun closes with advice to focus less obsessively on the next destination and more on learning from the journey through rapid change.