ToltIQ's new Deep Research feature makes it possible for PE firms to conduct market intelligence at unprecedented speed, cutting pre-diligence time from weeks to hours.
Deep Research was designed specifically for how you work in private markets, eliminating the 30-40 hour desktop research bottleneck that slows down every single deal.
The average PE firm evaluates 80 deals before investing in a single company. With total global PE deal volume rebounding 22% to $1.7 trillion in 2024, competition for quality assets has never been fiercer. Yet most firms still rely on manual processes during the pre-VDR period, with associates compiling research across disparate sources while waiting for formal access.
Every deal follows the same pattern but using the Deep Research feature it's possible to eliminate this bottleneck entirely. Enter a custom prompt mapping a fragmented competitive landscape, analyzing sector disruptions, compiling customer sentiment, and get comprehensive research documents in minutes, freeing up valuable time and resources.
While general-purpose LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude excel at broad research tasks, Deep Research focuses their power through a framework purpose-built for private markets, ensuring they understand PE terminology, deal structures, and the insights that drive investment decisions.
What sets Deep Research apart is the depth and structure of what it produces. Reports include structured analysis across key diligence dimensions: revenue model breakdowns with segment profitability estimates, competitive positioning matrices comparing strengths and weaknesses, multi-year financial trend analysis with key ratios, management team evaluations, cost structure analysis, and risk assessments with mitigation strategies. Each report delivers comprehensive research sourced from authoritative web sources and every claim is cited back to its source.
Using it in parallel with other ToltIQ capabilities, including SEC EDGAR filing downloads and Federal Reserve Economic Data, provides a powerful platform for developing comprehensive research.
ToltIQ's contractual agreements with foundation model providers guarantee zero data retention, providing additional confidence that your proprietary research is never used to train the underlying models.
Whether you're conducting pre-VDR market intelligence, validating management claims during diligence, or monitoring portfolio company markets post-close, all reports include complete source documentation and citations, delivering the transparency investment committees expect.
Deep Research adapts to whatever intelligence gap you need to fill:
The flexibility matters because no two diligence processes are identical. Deep Research meets you where the deal actually lives, not where a general purpose research tool thinks you should be.
Key capabilities:
Because Deep Research is built into the platform you're already using for VDR analysis, there's no context switching or tool juggling. Set the research in motion and continue to analyze your deal documents, download FRED data data, or catch up on email. You’ll receive a notification when your report is ready.
Here's what I typically see when a firm gets a new CIM on Monday morning. They spend the rest of the day summarizing the CIM and extracting the financials. The associate pulls up PitchBook, spends Tuesday morning on market sizing reports from three different sources that don't quite align, Wednesday building a competitive matrix from press releases and LinkedIn profiles, Thursday trying to figure out what the sponsor's last three exits actually looked like. By Friday's first call with management, you have enough to ask intelligent questions. Maybe.
While you’re using ToltIQ to analyze the CIM you can concurrently run your Deep Research and collapse the timeline to under an hour.
Before you commit resources to a deal, you need answers to questions the CIM won't address directly: Is this sponsor known for aggressive EBITDA adjustments? What does their portfolio company turnover actually look like? The target claims market leadership, but in which segment, and compared to whom? Is their TAM projection realistic? That VP of Sales they're highlighting, did she build the channel at her previous company, or inherit it? These aren't due diligence questions yet. They're screening questions that determine whether diligence is worth starting.
When you do reach that first management presentation, you're operating from a different position entirely. Management presents their market leadership story, and you're already cross-referencing it against the three competitors they didn't mention in the CIM. They emphasize their differentiated technology, and you've already mapped which adjacent sectors are solving the same problem differently. The CFO walks through margin expansion plans, and you've already pulled historical financials on their two disclosed customers to pressure-test the assumptions.
You're not scrambling to understand the market while management controls the narrative. You're testing their thesis against intelligence they don't know you have.
This changes what happens next. The research that previously took your team through week three of diligence (understanding the competitive landscape, validating market positioning, researching the sponsor's track record) now happens before you've committed serious resources. Which means the decision to walk away can happen in week one instead of week six. Or the decision to accelerate happens because you've already de-risked the sector thesis before the first management call.
The difference isn't just speed. It's decision quality at the point where your time investment is still minimal. When you're reviewing 80 opportunities to find one investment, that distinction compounds quickly.
I've spent enough time with PE firms to know that the best investors aren't looking for tools that do their thinking for them. They're looking for ways to think faster and better about which opportunities deserve their attention. That's what we built ToltIQ to do. It doesn't replace your judgment. It gives you the capability to exercise it earlier, when it matters most.
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