DiligenceSquared, an AI-powered platform that automates commercial due diligence and market research for investment teams, announced it has raised $5 million in seed funding to expand its operations and meet growing demand from private equity firms. The funding round was led by RELENTLESS with participation from Y Combinator and additional investors.
The funding will support its rapid expansion as adoption grows among investment firms seeking faster and lower-cost ways to evaluate potential deals.
DiligenceSquared aims to replace traditional consulting-led diligence processes, which private equity funds often purchase from major consulting firms such as McKinsey, BCG, and Bain at costs ranging from $500,000 to $1 million per project. The company’s AI-native platform automates large parts of the research and analysis process while maintaining human oversight to ensure accuracy.
The platform uses AI voice agents to conduct expert interviews, automatically synthesizes insights from those conversations, and generates interactive reports with full source traceability. The company said this approach enables investment teams to evaluate more opportunities earlier in the deal process and at significantly lower cost.
Founded in October, the company has already completed projects with several private equity firms and mid-market funds across the United States and Europe, representing more than $2 trillion in combined assets under management. The company believes the early adoption reflects a broader shift within private equity toward AI-driven tools capable of replacing manual diligence workflows that have seen limited technological innovation for decades.
DiligenceSquared was founded by Frederik Hansen, Søren Biltoft, and Harshil Rastogi, who bring experience across private equity, consulting, and large-scale AI systems. Hansen previously spent six years at Blackstone, rising to Principal on the firm’s private equity team across San Francisco, New York, and London. Biltoft was a Principal in BCG’s Private Equity practice where he led commercial due diligence projects for major private equity and hedge fund clients. Rastogi previously worked at Google, where he led efforts on AI systems designed to detect fraud, scams, and abuse within the company’s advertising division.
The platform is designed to automate many of the time-consuming steps involved in commercial due diligence, including sourcing industry experts, conducting interviews, synthesizing insights, and producing investor-ready reports. According to the company, advances in voice AI now make it possible to conduct dozens or even hundreds of expert interviews simultaneously, eliminating one of the biggest bottlenecks in traditional diligence projects.
The company’s workflow begins with a research blueprint that defines key market questions and deal angles. Its system then sources relevant industry experts and engages them through AI voice agents capable of conducting multilingual interviews with customers, competitors, and market insiders. After gathering insights, the platform synthesizes thousands of data points into structured findings and produces interactive reports that allow investors to trace each conclusion back to the original interview transcripts.
While AI performs much of the underlying analysis, DiligenceSquared integrates human oversight into the process. Senior consulting professionals review outputs, verify nuance and context, and ensure that insights meet the standards required for investment decisions.
The company said this hybrid model enables it to deliver consulting-quality analysis with significantly faster turnaround times and improved transparency compared with traditional static reports.
KEY QUOTES
“Commercial due diligence hasn’t changed in decades. It’s highly standardized work, executed manually, and sold at a massive markup. We’re using AI to automate what is repeatable and applying human review where accuracy and judgment matter. The result is faster insights, lower cost, and a level of transparency that simply isn’t possible in static PowerPoint slides.”
Frederik Hansen, Co-Founder And CEO Of DiligenceSquared
“This team brings a rare combination of deep domain expertise, technical strength, and firsthand experience purchasing and relying on traditional commercial due diligence. They understand exactly where the inefficiencies are and have built an AI-first approach that delivers speed, transparency, and rigor in a way the traditional consulting model can’t. We believe this will become the new standard for how investment teams run diligence and have integrated their product in our own processes.”
Damir Becirovic, Founding Partner At Relentless
“Investors won’t adopt tools that are 80–90% correct. Our model automates the heavy lifting while keeping human judgment exactly where it’s needed. It gives clients the reliability of a traditional consulting product, delivered at a fundamentally different speed and cost.”
Søren Biltoft, Co-Founder And COO Of DiligenceSquared
