You see the same debate raging across almost every industry. It’s people vs AI. Who does the job best? Who’s at risk of being replaced? 

But in M&A (at the very least) that’s the wrong conversation. And it’s not how things are panning out in reality.  

Datasite and FT Longitude recently asked a thousand senior dealmakers for their views on AI tools. The largest survey of its kind to date, it revealed an industry already irrevocably changed. AI is no longer an optional extra. It’s embedded, to the extent that seven in 10 dealmakers believe that firms ignoring AI today will struggle to compete within five years.  

But for Datasite’s executive team, there’s a far more interesting angle to these findings. It’s not ‘AI is taking over.’ It’s how dealmakers assisted by AI can transform the way the job is done, for the better. As Datasite CMO Merlin Piscitelli says, ‘We’re seeing a real shift in what deal teams look like.’ 

AI is changing how deals get done 

AI is a rapidly evolving technology, and its applications are evolving along with it. While initially being tentatively adopted into some menial tasks, leading dealmakers are now integrating the technology into their M&A practice with intention. As Raj Bakhru, General Manager of Blueflame AI, says, ‘AI is quickly becoming a critical part of how deal teams get real work done.’ 

As AI becomes naturalized in the operating model of dealmaking, teams aren’t replacing experienced professionals or getting any smaller. Instead, they’re making the most of their human talent. 

For decades, deals have required highly skilled people to spend many hours gathering information, reviewing documents, building analyses, and preparing recommendations. Only in hindsight are dealmakers ruefully acknowledging that maybe this wasn’t the best use of their time. 

Now AI is handling those process-heavy tasks, and providing deal teams with faster insights. Raj notes, ‘The agent can elevate not just you as a power user, but everyone around you and your entire team together.’ 

The upshot is that the skills of human dealmakers now have – potentially – far more useful applications. 

The Datasite/FT Longitude report reflects that sea change. Half of dealmakers now regularly use AI in due diligence, while virtually all (96%) are already using AI for sourcing and screening opportunities.  

The implications are profound. AI is no longer just supporting the deal process. It is increasingly fundamental to it. 

Finding the new competitive advantage 

With such rapid and widespread uptake, clearly it’s no longer a competitive advantage to merely be using AI. That advantage will come from how dealmakers use it. For Raj Bakhru, the next phase of AI adoption is about whether organizations know how to build repeatable ways of working around AI. 

Early adoption often looks like experimentation, an occasional task performed here or there. But today’s leading firms are now moving beyond isolated use cases towards AI-enabled workflows that entire teams can rely on. The key is not individual productivity so much as organizational capability. 

This step is critical, because the key to competitive advantage is consistency. This is made possible when AI is embedded across sourcing, diligence, analysis, and preparation. 

In that sense, AI isn’t replacing anything. Rather, it’s unlocking and amplifying sources of value that previously didn’t have space to breathe. 

Human judgment at a premium once more 

One of the most striking themes emerging from our executive discussions is the new emphasis on human judgment. Not that it wasn’t valuable before, but it seems AI has made it into the decisive factor. 

Nevin Raj, General Manager of Grata, highlights the effects of teams being able to spot opportunities sooner, and to gain a real understanding of businesses in a fraction of the time it used to take. At a basic practical level, it primes them to ask better questions and prepare more thoroughly for due diligence.  

But he reminds us that speed alone isn’t the key advantage. Trust is. ‘There's nothing that gets a deal done better than trust.’ Nevin points out that this remains an area where human capabilities are unsurpassed. ‘It’s technology that helps you make that decision faster, but ultimately, you can’t speed up how long it takes to build a relationship.’ 

Merlin agrees. ‘I look at the new deal team report, and I say the future is not humans versus AI. It's really how can we enable the humans with AI.’ 

When it comes to understanding motivations or developing convictions around a transaction, humans reign supreme. While AI increasingly supports early-stage analysis, 45% of the report’s respondents believe the decision to proceed to signing should remain entirely human. Even more tellingly, not a single respondent believed signing decisions should be made entirely by AI. 

When asked which capabilities are hardest for AI to replicate, dealmakers overwhelmingly pointed to negotiation, relationship management, strategic judgment, and decision-making under uncertainty. By identifying what AI is not good at, they are essentially writing the person-spec for the deal team of tomorrow. 

As AI reduces the friction throughout the early phases of a deal, the last mile becomes ever more crucial. That home stretch – involving skills such as reading a room, building trust with founders, understanding organizational culture, and navigating competing interests – will be what separates the winners from the runners-up. 

Everything hinges on trust 

As AI moves from experimentation into the operating model of dealmaking, the question changes. It is no longer only what the technology can do. It is whether organizations can use it to make work faster, insight stronger, and decisions better governed. 

As Datasite’s CFO Anjali Motiani argues, ‘AI is becoming a business transformation conversation. It is not just a technology conversation.’ 

That distinction matters. Successful organizations will not be the ones that simply adopt the newest tools fastest. They will be the ones that build the habits, accountability, and ways of working needed to turn AI-supported insight into better outcomes. 

That is where governance becomes part of the new deal team story. 

As AI becomes more embedded in dealmaking, it will change not only how teams find information, but how that information moves through the organization. More insight can surface earlier. More questions can be answered faster. More risks can be identified before they become blockers. But those gains only matter if leaders can understand the context, challenge the assumptions, and make decisions with confidence. 

AI is transforming the deal, but boards still govern the outcome,' says Tobias Häckermann, CEO of Sherpany. 'Faster insight only creates value if the context behind it doesn't get lost along the way. Leaders need to see the assumptions, the conditions, and the intent behind a decision – not just the analysis that led to it – so they can challenge it, verify it, and stand behind it with confidence.' 

The way decision-making is governed will only grow more important, and the firms that succeed will be those with leaders who understand when to trust the technology, when to challenge it, and how to keep accountability clear as AI becomes part of the way deals are run. 

This is why the governance will only become more important. The firms that succeed will be the ones that know when to trust the technology, when to challenge it, and how to keep accountability clear as AI becomes part of the way deals are run. 

And that’s why, paradoxically, AI is making M&A more human. It is freeing dealmakers from the robotic work of processing documents and allowing them to focus on the areas where human ability can shine brightest. Deals become more personal when the true competitive edge is not the AI itself, but the people using it with judgment, context, and accountability. 

Confidence in the future 

‘The future of dealmaking will be faster,’ says Merlin, ‘but it has to be trusted.’ 

As Raj reminds us, ‘Trust of AI really requires two things. It requires that you have confidence that the information you’re putting in the AI is not going to be revealed to others, that the AI is protecting your sensitive data. It also requires that you know that the data and the information that it’s acting on and what it outputs is accurate.’ 

Nevin concurs, ‘It’s all about knowing that the information you use, the prompts you write, the way you interact, are not going to get out to the world and that your competitive advantage stays with you.’ 

This is the future that Datasite is helping to build: one where deal teams move faster with source-backed insight, sensitive information stays protected, and better context flows into the leadership, governance, and board-level decisions that shape every transaction.