From Data to Insight: Where AI Is Delivering Value for Alternative Investors

In a cycle where private market firms can no longer rely on favorable conditions alone, the ability to move quickly and confidently on high-value opportunities is increasingly becoming a competitive edge — and it all starts with data. But as the alternative investments market continues to grow, so does the amount of data general partners (GPs) and limited partners (LPs) must sift through to make informed decisions.

Extracting key data points from financial, legal and due diligence documents is one area where artificial intelligence (AI) is delivering real value for private market firms. In the second installment of the Alts AI blog series, we’re exploring how GPs and LPs are using AI-powered data extraction to accelerate diligence, streamline reporting and surface insights across the fund lifecycle.

Reducing administrative overhead

Unlike public market data, which is widely available and highly standardized, private market data is often dispersed across fund reports, financial statements, legal documents and due diligence questionnaires (DDQs). Extracting insights from unstructured data buried in scanned documents, spreadsheets and PDFs has historically been a time-consuming process.

That’s beginning to change, however, as AI-enabled platforms now allow teams to use conversational search queries to quickly identify and synthesize key insights, rather than reviewing documents line by line or replying on hit-or-miss keyword searches.

This is especially impactful during fundraising and due diligence, where GPs may already have years of approved responses scattered across DDQs, compliance documentation and investor reports. AI can surface trends and automatically generate responses to LP questions based on validated historical data, improving consistency and reducing repetitive, manual work.

Putting unstructured data to use

Increasingly, firms are also using AI to interrogate larger datasets across portfolio and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. StepStone Group’s Director and Head of AI Qi Liu, who we spoke to for our report, What AI Adoption Means for GPs and LPs, describes how her firm is using AI to generate investment summaries: “Trained on prior investment committee-approved one‑pagers, it pulls structured and unstructured deal materials to generate a consistent, high‑quality first draft that teams can quickly refine.”

At LGT Capital Partners, teams are using agentic AI tools to analyze decades of portfolio and fund information, helping them quickly surface relevant insights from internal data. AI is proving particularly effective at uncovering qualitative information that would otherwise remain buried across decks, investor updates and portfolio commentary.

 “It allows us to search across all industry [knowledge] gained over the 25 years we have been investing to understand how funds are performing across different vintages, sectors and geographies,” says Giles Travers, who is head of platform management at the global multi-alternatives firm.

Why speed to insight matters

AI-driven efficiency gains aren’t just reducing administrative overhead and speeding analysis, they’re helping firms advance broader strategic goals. Rather than manually parsing and reentering unstructured data from multiple systems, GPs can quickly aggregate performance data, helping them identify market inefficiencies, overperformers and potential risks before their competitors do.

But competitive advantage in private markets isn’t just measured by investment performance — it’s also measured by how effectively firms communicate with their LPs. As reporting expectations continue to rise alongside the growth of retail participation in private markets, the ability to quickly validate, organize and deliver accurate information is becoming an operational necessity. GPs that can shorten diligence cycles, improve responsiveness and enable LPs to make decisions with greater confidence will be best positioned to win and retain investors.

From isolated tools to connected workflows

Rapid access to actionable insights is already table stakes for private market investors. But the next advantage will come from the ability to connect data, workflows and decision-making across the investment life cycle.

Firms using standard large language models (LLMs) outside of secure data rooms and portals are inviting significant privacy and accuracy risk by uploading sensitive data to external systems that lack the specialization needed to process complex investment data. That’s why it’s critical to leverage trusted, purpose-built tools trained on domain-specific financial data.

SS&C Intralinks FundCentre AI™ and DealCentre AI™ bring the power of Link, our proprietary AI engine, to the most trusted fund management and M&A platforms on the market.

FundCentre enables fund managers to streamline fundraising, onboarding, reporting and investor communications within a unified AI-powered platform purpose-built for private markets. AI-driven DDQ response generation, guided onboarding and intelligent reporting capabilities help firms reduce their administrative burden while improving transparency and responsiveness for LPs.

DealCentre AI brings the same intelligence and efficiency to deal prep, marketing and due diligence, helping firms centralize information and surface insights across the investment process. Together, these platforms are enabling a more intelligent operating model — one built on connected workflows, trusted data and the ability to act with speed and conviction.

In the years ahead, AI won’t replace the human judgment that drives private market investing, but it will increasingly determine which firms can move fastest and create the most value from their data.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Alts AI series, where we’ll explore how AI is reshaping the LP experience — from first touch through onboarding, reporting and beyond.