AI-Driven Value Creation in Private Equity: Harvard Business Review

The quietest thing in private equity right now is the loudest signal in enterprise AI: it’s not the tech, it’s the timing, and eight PE firms just clocked it down to the quarter.

On June 16, 2025, Harvard Business Review dropped a feature that reads like a CIA dossier for fund managers with AI envy. Co-written by Vikram Mahidhar of Apollo Global Management, Inc. and Tom Davenport of Babson College, this isn’t some high-level vapor about disruption. It’s a breakdown of how elite PE firms are cracking value with AI, and it’s packed with data, deals, and operators who don’t bet unless they’ve built the dice.

Vikram Mahidhar runs point on Apollo’s Portfolio Performance Solutions (APPS), an internal strike team that deploys AI like a SWAT unit, inserting into ops with diligence playbooks so granular they make McKinsey decks look like preschool art. Apollo fields 25 GPs per deal to vet ROI potential on AI levers before signing term sheets. That’s not a framework, that’s Force Recon.

Meanwhile, MGX is moving like a sovereign-backed cloud cartel, launching its Global AIInfrastructure Partnership with Microsoft, BlackRock, and Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). With Misha Logvinov leading the New York office, they’ve gone full-stack on AI engineers and skipped the data science fluff. Why wait for insight when you can engineer outcomes?

BayPine brought in Cory Eaves to hardwire digital DNA into old-economy portfolio plays. They’re not chasing unicorns, they’re recoding camels. BayPine calls it “digital transformation capital,” but the execution reads more like industrial surgery with machine precision. It’s not sexy, it’s profitable.

Then there’s GrowthCurve Capital. Sajjad Jaffer isn’t just on the investment committee, he’s built the ML architecture that powers their thesis. With exits lined up across Netchex, Mistplay, Brightway, and Revecore, GrowthCurve’s model isn’t data-driven, it’s data-defined.

Every firm in this study moved beyond AI buzz. They systematized it. Flywheel prioritization. DANCE governance. Exit-prepped valuation metrics. The generative side? Still nascent, cautiously deployed. But the analytical AI? That’s already buying margin and stacking EBITDA.

This isn’t a trend piece. It’s a forecast with footnotes. The next PE cycle will split clean: firms that mastered AI integration vs. those still hunting CTOs in month seven post-close. MGX’s NVIDIA data center campus and Mistral AI bets are early proof that AI-first AUM won’t just grow, it’ll compound.

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