As part of our recent webinar, AI in M&A: What’s Working, What’s Next, we polled participants to get a pulse on how deal professionals are currently using AI, and where they see the greatest opportunities ahead. The responses offer a revealing snapshot of an industry in transition: full of interest, but still early in execution.
Current reality: limited systematic AI use
Across the buy-side M&A practitioners in attendance, 46% said they are not yet using AI systematically in their deal process.
Among the rest, the top current use cases are:
- Due diligence (analysis)
- Identifying targets
- Deal screening & prioritization
- Document/report creation
Clearly, many teams are still in experimentation mode—and focused on applying AI in labor-intensive tasks that benefit from automation or summarization.
Looking ahead: where AI will expand in M&A
Opportunities on the buy-side:
When asked where they see the biggest AI opportunity over the next 18 months:
- Due diligence (a combined 32 responses across analysis, modeling, and evaluation) and identifying targets (24 responses) topped the list.
- Deal screening (22 responses) followed close behind.
This signals a strong push toward streamlined due diligence analysis and smarter sourcing and faster screening — particularly for programmatic M&A teams.
Opportunities on the sell-side:
From the sell-side participants, the top identified future opportunities for AI usage were:
- Market preparation
- Approach & modeling
- Due diligence
- Bid process automation
The sell-side clearly wants to streamline the go-to-market and transaction readiness phases — and increasingly sees AI as a way to reduce time-to-deal and improve outcomes.
Takeaway: AI’s M&A inflection point is now
From sourcing to screening, diligence to documentation, M&A teams are starting to identify repeatable areas where AI can save time, reduce risk, and improve decision-making. While adoption is still early, the signal is strong: AI is set to play a central role in both buy-side and sell-side M&A — especially in tasks that demand speed, scale, and synthesis.
Interested in seeing how M&A teams are already putting AI to work?
Watch the full webinar on demand
