A typical merger-and-acquisition course of is time-consuming and costly, even for the biggest, well-staffed personal fairness corporations. Along with spending numerous hours assembly with senior executives of potential targets and modeling monetary outcomes, these teams spend hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on exterior advisers: accountants, attorneys, and administration consultants.
Since bills for exterior advisers aren’t reimbursed if a deal falls via, PE corporations wait till they’re sure of their curiosity earlier than partaking pricey specialists reminiscent of consultants from McKinsey, BCG, or Bain to carry out in depth industrial analysis in the marketplace and the goal firm.
DiligenceSquared, a startup that was a part of YC’s Fall 2025 cohort, says that with the assistance of AI, it will probably present top-tier consultancy-quality industrial analysis at a fraction of the standard value.
The startup’s co-founders, Frederik Hansen and Søren Biltoft, possess deep experience in personal fairness due diligence. Hansen was previously a principal at Blackstone, the place he commissioned these studies for a number of billion-dollar buyouts. In the meantime, Biltoft spent seven years in BCG’s personal fairness follow main some of these diligence efforts.
Since launching in October, Hansen’s and Biltoft’s trade expertise has helped DiligenceSquared full a number of initiatives for a number of of the world’s largest PE corporations and mid-market funds, Hansen tells TechCrunch.
That early traction satisfied Damir Becirovic, a former Index Ventures companion, to steer DiligenceSquared’s $5 million seed spherical out of his new VC agency, Relentless.
As an alternative of counting on costly administration consultants, the startup makes use of AI voice brokers to conduct interviews with clients of the businesses the PE corporations are contemplating shopping for.
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DiligenceSquared is making use of the identical AI-interview mannequin seen in client analysis startups like Keplar, Outset, and Pay attention Labs, which in January raised $69 million at a $500 million valuation. However Hansen and Biltoft argue that their due-diligence course of and remaining outputs are essentially completely different from the buyer analysis produced by these startups.
PE corporations will pay $500,000 to $1 million for McKinsey, Bain, or BCG to interview dozens of company clients, together with C-suite executives, and produce 200-page studies synthesizing these insights with proprietary market knowledge, Hansen mentioned. To make sure the standard of the evaluation, DiligenceSquared entails senior human consultants who confirm the accuracy and industrial insights of the ultimate output.
Since AI is doing numerous the groundwork, the startup claims it will probably present the evaluation for simply $50,000.
“We’re taking these nice insights that had been beforehand reserved for the very large choices, and now we make them extra accessible,” Hansen mentioned. Due to the lower cost level, PE corporations are actually much more prepared to interact DiligenceSquared earlier within the course of, effectively earlier than they’ve excessive conviction in a deal.
DiligenceSquared isn’t the one firm making an attempt to disrupt the diligence market. Its primary competitor, Bridgetown Analysis, raised a $19 million Collection A co-led by Accel and Lightspeed in February 2026.
Along with Hansen and Biltoft, DiligenceSquared was co-founded by Harshil Rastogi, a former Google engineer.