Bain’s Private Equity Midyear Report 2026 puts the problem in four words: 12 is the new 5. A deal that could get by with 5% annual EBITDA growth a decade ago now needs about 12% to return 2.5x over a five year hold. Purchase multiples and the cost of leveraged debt are elevated at the same time, which has pushed Bain’s deal cost index into record territory. Multiple expansion is not coming back to do the work, and cheap debt is not coming back to carry the hold.
That leaves a wider spread to cover and one place to find it: the operations of the portfolio company, during the hold. Bain’s prescription is to focus on what a sponsor can control, and AI sits near the top of that list. Bain is clear that AI is more than a cheaper way to do the same work. The companies seeing the greatest impact use it to take out cost first, then to sharpen pricing, lift sales and open new sources of revenue.
Where AI is already moving the numbers
We have spent the past few years building AI into multi brand, multi site businesses, much of it in home services and field service, where PE roll ups are most active. Every use case below is live with clients today, not on a roadmap. They are grouped by the part of the business that owns the outcome.
- One set of numbers across every brand. A unified KPI model brings every acquired brand onto one governed board view, live across 60+ brands at one group and stood up in 30 days at another.
- Demand, dispatch and field productivity. 275+ forecasting models run at over 90% accuracy, alongside AI dispatch, work order intelligence, SLA risk scoring and predictive maintenance.
- Pricing and revenue. Pricing optimization and revenue forecasting protect margin and flag deal slippage and renewal risk early.
- Marketing and customer growth. Lead scoring, attribution, AI booking, Customer 360 and churn prediction connect spend to the jobs and revenue it produces.
- Supply chain and procurement. Inventory planning, reorder agents and supplier risk detection keep parts in stock and jobs on schedule.
- People and workforce. Attrition risk, hiring planning, skills-gap visibility and payroll anomaly detection address the sector’s real constraint: qualified labor
Finance is next. Rolling forecasts and scenario models, month-end close acceleration and cash-flow forecasting are in pilot with clients now.
What can we do for you that is different and effective:
The real impact with AI is achieved when you start with the business KPI’s first, and then work your way down to the AI initiatives that positively affect them. This helps to directly link AI spend to Enterprise Value Creation, measure progress and course correct as needed, which is the core of our approach. And the good part is that the first results can be delivered in weeks, and not after a long drawn project.
We are currently working with a couple of PE firms on exactly this. If you want to learn what these use cases could mean for your portfolio, and what to expect along the way, let’s talk.
Sources
Bain & Company, Control the Controllable, Weather the Rest: Private Equity Midyear Report 2026, Jun 8, 2026. https://www.bain.com/insights/private-equity-midyear-report-2026/
