A typical merger-and-acquisition course of is time-consuming and costly, even for the biggest, well-staffed non-public fairness corporations. Along with spending numerous hours assembly with senior executives of potential targets and modeling monetary outcomes, these teams spend tens of millions of {dollars} on exterior advisers: accountants, attorneys, and administration consultants.
Since bills for exterior advisers usually are not reimbursed if a deal falls by means of, PE corporations wait till they’re sure of their curiosity earlier than participating pricey specialists corresponding to consultants from McKinsey, BCG, or Bain to carry out intensive business 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 could actually present top-tier consultancy-quality business analysis at a fraction of the normal value.
The startup’s co-founders, Frederik Hansen and Søren Biltoft, possess deep experience in non-public fairness due diligence. Hansen was previously a principal at Blackstone, the place he commissioned these stories for a number of billion-dollar buyouts. In the meantime, Biltoft spent seven years in BCG’s non-public fairness observe main all these diligence efforts.
Since launching in October, Hansen’s and Biltoft’s business 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 associate, to guide 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 shopper analysis startups like Keplar, Outset, and Listen 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 totally 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 stories synthesizing these insights with proprietary market knowledge, Hansen mentioned. To make sure the standard of the evaluation, DiligenceSquared includes senior human consultants who confirm the accuracy and business insights of the ultimate output.
Since AI is doing lots of the groundwork, the startup claims it could actually present the evaluation for simply $50,000.
“We’re taking these nice insights that had been beforehand reserved for the very huge selections, and now we make them extra accessible,” Hansen mentioned. Due to the cheaper price level, PE corporations at the moment are much more keen to have interaction DiligenceSquared earlier within the course of, nicely earlier than they’ve excessive conviction in a deal.
DiligenceSquared isn’t the one firm making an attempt to disrupt the diligence market. Its important 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.
