Underwriting Deals in the AI Era
AI is changing not only what gets built, but how investors should evaluate what is worth backing.
As intelligence becomes cheaper and more abundant, assumptions around margins, defensibility, labor leverage, speed of execution, and competitive advantage are being rewritten. At the same time, AI is creating new constraints around compute, power, infrastructure, data, and physical supply chains.
The result is a different underwriting environment—across venture, private markets, and the real economy.
Defensibility Is Changing
As intelligence becomes cheaper and more widely available, traditional software moats are weakening. Investors need to ask what remains scarce: proprietary data, distribution, infrastructure, trust, customer access, or something else.
Capital Intensity Is Moving
AI may lower the cost of some forms of work while increasing demand for compute, energy, data centers, infrastructure, and critical materials. The economics of digital businesses are becoming increasingly physical.
Underwriting Needs to Evolve
The question is no longer simply whether a company uses AI. Investors need to understand how AI changes margins, competitive dynamics, execution speed, market structure, and business durability.
From Thesis to Practice
Underwriting in the AI Era is also being developed as a workshop and discussion framework for investors evaluating companies, markets, and industries being reshaped by AI.
Topics include defensibility, changing cost structures, capital intensity, infrastructure dependencies, and how AI alters traditional underwriting assumptions.