Meet Petra, the AI that runs a PE firm

Meet Petra, the AI that manages a private equity firm - Ethos Capital. The Boston-based firm spent five years creating Private Equity Transformation Research Agent (Petra), an AI assistant trained on over 50,000 data sources. Today, Petra is integrated into nearly all aspects of Ethos' business, from filtering pitch decks and running initial diligence to managing investor relationships.

The AI system also tracks employees' work outputs, but does not track individual work, only work product such as analysis, notes and models. Petra has significantly reduced the time needed for deal screening, and its users value its ability to produce faster, deeper market research. However, there is skepticism about AI completely replacing human decision-making, as AI can produce "hallucination effects" and lacks subjective, qualitative factors in decision-making.