Dealstack, a London-based platform designed to streamline private capital operations, has raised $5.5M in seed funding. The round was backed by a group of senior professionals from industry-leading firms, including Paul Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, KKR, CVC, TA Associates, and Goldman Sachs, among others.
Founded by Joel Arnell, a former Partner at Kirkland & Ellis, and Seb Lapinski, a former investor at Oaktree Capital, Dealstack seeks to modernise private capital operations, which often rely on outdated and inefficient tools.
It automates critical workflows that are traditionally managed manually, such as valuation waterfalls, employee equity and ownership tracking, structure charts, and contract management.
Despite the growing excitement around AI’s potential, the technology has been slow to make a meaningful impact in private capital. Data security, regulatory concerns, and the complex nature of the sector have made it challenging to apply AI in a way that delivers real-world value. The success of AI in this field depends on clean, connected, and trusted data.
“Private equity is full of brilliant people working with ancient tools,” said Lapinski, Dealstack’s co-founder and COO. “We built Dealstack because highly qualified professionals shouldn’t be stuck copying and pasting data from spreadsheets to PDFs when AI and automated workflows can do that for them.”
Dealstack builds a data model unique to each customer. The platform’s AI capabilities are powered by a structured data model that maps the legal, financial, and ownership relationships within private capital. This "private capital ontology" is designed to provide clarity and consistency in the complex ownership and waterfall structures that private capital firms manage, improving legal and regulatory compliance along the way.
Arnell, Dealstack’s CEO and co-founder, explained: “As M&A lawyers and investors, we’ve lived these inefficiencies first-hand. We built a platform designed specifically for private capital to automate the highly manual workflows that prevail. The broad backing from leading industry figures shows we are on the right track.”
In just two years, the platform has been adopted by 30+ private capital firms managing a combined total of $2.6T in assets under management (AUM). Among these are six of the top 10 global private capital firms by funds raised, and eight of the top 10 in Europe. In the future, Dealstack envisions a fully agentic platform that could handle end-to-end tasks without human intervention.
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