DPI Pressure Tests Governance, and AI Embeds Diligence Execution

DPI Pressure Turns Continuation Vehicles into a Governance Test

LP pressure on realized returns sharpened this week as exits stayed slow, putting DPI and distribution timing ahead of paper marks in manager scrutiny. Commentary citing McKinsey’s 2025 survey said 2.5x as many LPs now rank DPI as “most critical” versus three years ago, a sign that investors are cash-flow negative because “old capital hasn’t returned.” Valuation remains a concern, but it is now secondary to liquidity delivery: separate reporting cited $3.6 trillion of unrealized value across roughly 29,000 unsold companies, while 37% of investment professionals pointed to problems with valuation reporting frequency and accuracy.

Continuation vehicles are absorbing that pressure, but with tighter scrutiny on governance, pricing fairness, disclosure, and conflicts of interest, especially when the same sponsor controls both the selling fund and the new vehicle. Blue Sea’s oversubscribed continuation vehicle for One Physics shows the structure still works when the asset is strong and the terms offer both liquidity and upside. Blue Sea, invested since 2019, used the deal to provide liquidity to some LPs while rolling capital and funding further acquisitions and organic growth at a company that has completed 22 acquisitions since 2019. For PE and growth professionals, the job now includes building defensible liquidity paths, supporting fair value earlier, and managing LP choice architecture with cleaner process discipline.

Diligence Shifts from Document Review to AI-Embedded Execution

On 23 July 2026, Nasdaq said it will acquire Dasseti and fold its AI-enabled DDQ, RFP, and monitoring workflows into eVestment, pushing the platform from manager screening into manager research, due diligence, and ongoing oversight. Nasdaq said eVestment already connects about 4,800 asset managers with more than 1,000 asset owners and intermediaries across $90T+ in AUM, while Dasseti adds coverage of roughly 16,000 private-market managers and 95,000 private funds.

The same week, Ansarada launched AiDA, a prompt-first assistant that lets deal teams query permissioned data-room content, generate summaries, automate Q&A, surface key clauses and dates, flag discrepancies, and route users to AI-Sort, AI-Redact, and AI-Translate in one workflow. HighQ also positioned its environment as a secure workspace for ingesting and reviewing documents, centralizing Q&A, flagging issues, and generating first-draft diligence reports.

For investors and deal professionals, the job is shifting away from manual retrieval and toward exception handling, judgment, and workflow control. The advantage now sits with people who can validate AI outputs, manage permissioned processes, and move faster across internal teams and external advisors.