MSCI Acquires AI-Startup to Automate Due-Diligence Processes

MSCI has snapped up artificial intelligence provider Vantager to help institutional investors better perform due diligence on alternatives managers and private market funds, according to a news release.

The New York-based startup, which was founded in 2024, uses an AI-native platform to centralize fragmented general partner, fund and portfolio data, according to the firm’s website. Vantager’s tech aims to eliminate manual processes associated with “early-stage” due diligence and speed up institutional investors’ ability to screen managers, pull information from general partners’ data and produce diligence reports.

Despite the largely manual and time-consuming processes, investor due diligence has become “increasingly standardized over the past several years,” which has created a “real opportunity for AI — and managers are taking advantage of it,” David Goldstein, a director of product and fund services at STP Investment Services, said in an email.

Still, the use of AI in due diligence has its limits, Goldstein said.

“Due diligence, at its core, is still more likely to eliminate managers than approve them. Investors use it to screen out risk, not to make final allocations,” he said. “The ultimate investment decision still comes down to a face-to-face conversation between investor and manager. That relationship, that judgment call, AI won’t replace it. Nor should it.”

Read the full article in FundFire.