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Ethos Capital tests AI assistant Petra across PE deal workflow
The Boston firm built Petra over about five years using more than 50,000 data sources, then integrated it into activities from pitch screening and diligence to managing investor communications.
Ethos Capital, a Boston-based private equity firm, has been testing and deploying an AI assistant called Private Equity Transformation Research Agent, or Petra, across much of its deal and portfolio workflow, according to Yahoo Finance.
The firm said it spent around five years building Petra and trained it on more than 50,000 data sources, including decks tied to deals it has taken or passed on, as well as public information from areas such as regulatory filings and news and video. Ethos uses Petra to filter pitch decks, run early diligence, monitor portfolio companies, and support investor relationship work.
Ethos co-founder and managing partner Fadi Chehadé said Petra also helps with internal performance tracking. The system is described as creating a digital footprint of employees' work and capturing and routing information such as email, calendar invites, and Slack messages to the people the system determines need it.
The article says Ethos targets middle-market companies with an enterprise value of $200 million to $2 billion and manages a $512 million closed-end fund, along with co-investment capital and a multi-billion-dollar continuation fund that was raised to house Identity Digital, a portfolio company it backed in 2021. Chehadé said the AI compresses an initial pass on every pitch from two to four weeks to about half an hour.