AI used to be a slide near the back of the CIM. It is moving to the front. FTI Consulting's 2026 Private Equity AI Radar found that more than three-quarters of PE respondents consider AI at least somewhat important in exit positioning. The funds that perform best on AI, which FTI calls the PE AI Alpha Tier, report 18% more AI-related exits than their peers.
What Buyers Value
When respondents assess acquisition targets, these AI factors rank as important or critical value drivers:
- AI talent or technical team: 67%
- Proprietary data assets or AI infrastructure: 57%
- Product or platform AI capabilities: 57%
- Accelerating growth or entering new markets: 41%
- Preventing disruption from a competitor: 19%
Buyers want AI as a reason the business will grow faster, not as a hedge against competitors. Offensive positioning outranks defensive positioning by more than two to one.
What Sellers Are Preparing
For exit readiness, respondents' top AI priorities are data infrastructure modernization (42%), AI-enabled compliance and risk (36%), AI-supported document processing (36%) and AI-driven forecasting (35%). For a healthcare platform, data infrastructure is the main one, since most roll-ups arrive at exit with data spread across every system they acquired.
The Problem With Rented AI at Exit
A platform that licenses AI tools location by location has little to show a buyer. It has contracts, not capability. The workflows live in the vendor's product. The data sits in several systems, and the results are hard to separate from everything else that happened during the hold. In diligence, that reads as a cost line.
Four Parts of an AI-Ready Exit Story
| What buyers look for | How a Samara platform shows it |
|---|---|
| Proprietary data and AI infrastructure | Unified data on an Enterprise Sovereign AI OS the platform owns, which transfers with the business |
| Platform AI capability | The Rollup Engine and Operations Engine running in production at every location |
| Growth acceleration | Location-level KPIs baselined before go-live, showing fill rate, no-show and new-patient gains |
| A repeatable path for future add-ons | A record of acquisitions going live in under 30 days, each one expanding the Alpha-Tier |
Compliance Is Part of the Story
AI-enabled compliance and risk is the second-highest exit readiness priority in FTI's survey. In healthcare, buyers will ask where PHI lives, who can access it and how AI workflows are governed. A platform that runs on its own infrastructure with defined access controls has a clear answer. See ownership and hosting models and HIPAA compliance.
Start at Entry, Not at Exit
FTI found AI use in deals is strongest in early diligence and weakest in late-stage exit execution, which is more customized and judgment-driven. The lesson for sponsors is that a platform cannot assemble an AI story in the months before a sale. The evidence buyers want, such as owned data, AI in production and measured results, takes the whole hold period to build. Going live early leaves more time to show results. Read more about AI across the PE hold period.
Next Step
Read about Samara for private equity, or book a demo to plan the AI side of your platform's exit story.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does AI affect healthcare platform exit valuations?
Buyers increasingly think so. In FTI Consulting's 2026 Private Equity AI Radar, over three-quarters of respondents consider AI factors at least somewhat important in exit positioning, and 57% rate proprietary data or AI infrastructure as an important or critical value driver in acquisitions.
What is the PE AI Alpha Tier?
FTI's term for the subset of private equity funds that achieve consistently stronger AI-linked returns. They report 6% stronger ROI realization, 5% more cost savings, 4% more revenue growth and 18% more AI-related exits than peers, regardless of fund size, industry or AI spend.
Does the AI system transfer to the buyer?
With Samara, yes. The platform owns its Sovereign AI OS, data, playbooks, configurations and workflows, so they transfer with the business.