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AI tools supporting financial modeling, due diligence, and target screening in mergers and acquisitions, highlighting efficiency and innovation in deal execution

The Transformative Role of AI in M&A: A Strategic Imperative

Author:Team OneBridge
Last Publication Date:2025-06-13
Read Time:5 mins

In the world of Mergers and Acquisitions, efficiency, insight, and execution speed often dictate deal outcomes. Traditionally, the processes of target screening, due diligence, deal negotiation, deal execution among others, has been human-intensive, requiring vast amounts of time, manual analysis, and multi-level coordination. However, artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly gaining traction in this landscape, offering the potential to enhance decision-making, accelerate timelines, and unlock hidden value across the deal lifecycle.

While the use of AI in M&A is still evolving, its emerging applications are proving not just beneficial but potentially transformative. Much like how non-traditional synergies offer undervalued upside in deal rationale, AI tools present a similar case: still early-stage today, but increasingly viewed as powerful levers for long-term value creation.

The sections below outline specific areas where AI is being explored to enhance the M&A transaction process. These capabilities, while still developing across many firms, are beginning to redefine how advisors, acquirers and sellers approach deals.

1. Target Screening and Profiling

AI-powered tools are rapidly emerging as a powerful solution for scanning public sources, press releases, financial reports, prospectuses, and media coverage to identify high-potential acquisition targets. These systems are increasingly capable of flagging early indicators such as tax or legal disputes, helping shape information request lists and focus management interviews during due diligence.

Machine learning models are also expected to play a critical role in anticipating market shifts and industry disruptions, enabling sharper, more strategic outreach. AI is well-positioned to support the drafting of Target Teasers (One Pagers) and to filter large datasets to pinpoint investment opportunities that align with specific deal criteria—particularly in private equity.

For mid-market advisors, these advancements promise to streamline market mapping, enhance lead quality, and provide a stronger edge in proprietary deal sourcing.

2. Virtual Data Room (VDR) Management

Virtual Data Rooms (VDRs) are central to modern M&A execution, yet organising and reviewing hundreds of documents remains a time-consuming task. AI-powered tools now show promise in streamlining the process by automatically sorting uploaded files, detecting sensitive information, and proposing redactions before documents are shared.
These capabilities are especially valuable for the sell-side in transactions involving high document volume, employee data, or competitively sensitive materials. The result is faster data room readiness and smoother buyer engagement.

3. Financial Modelling and Analysis

AI-enabled platforms have the potential to assist analysts by automating routine calculations, simulating alternate valuation scenarios, and rapidly stress testing assumptions.

Though these tools cannot replace core valuation judgment, they offer the potential to significantly enhance speed and consistency. Even lean deal teams could feasibly generatescenarios for a single deal, improving responsiveness to market changes or buyer-seller negotiations.

4. Information Memorandum (IM) Drafting

AI tools could be explored to generate first-draft content for information memorandum. By organising financials, business summaries, and management profiles into structured formats, AI may enable deal teams to work faster without compromising clarity or structure.
More importantly, it could reduce repetitive manual input, freeing deal team’s bandwidth to focus on strategic decision making and risk positioning.

5. Contract Review and Broader Due Diligence

Due diligence often sets the pace and tone of a transaction. AI tools have the potential to automate the review of voluminous legal and financial documents. One possible application is contract review, where AI could scan supplier and customer agreements for clauses related to termination, renegotiation, or transferability during M&A events.
This not only has the potential to accelerate diligence but also to minimise the risk of oversight. While human expertise remains indispensable, these tools are evolving into a second set of digital eyes in diligence rooms.

6. Risk Assessment and Management

AI has the potential to support regulatory and compliance workflows, from automating anti-money laundering (AML) checks to assisting with ESG disclosures and risk exposure assessments. As governance standards tighten globally, these tools could help lower legal costs and improve documentation precision, especially in cross-border or highly regulated deals.

7. Report Generation and Visualization

Beyond analysis, AI is gradually transforming how M&A materials are presented. Smart systems can now automatically generate visuals such as organisational charts, headcount distribution tables, and location-based asset maps based on raw data inputs.
This reduces design time, ensures uniformity across documents, and allows deal teams to focus on insights rather than formatting. When drafting an Information Memorandum (IM), AI-driven visualization can accelerate layout consistency and improve client-readiness.

OneBridge Leading the Change

At OneBridge Knowledge Partners, we are actively experimenting with AI to enhance high-volume tasks across analysis, drafting, and diligence. These early initiatives, while focused on specific components of the M&A process, lay the groundwork for a more robust and scalable AI capability in the near future.

With a lean team, deep industry expertise, and a technology-first mindset, we’re uniquely positioned to test, learn, and evolve rapidly. We view AI not as a distant disruption but as a current opportunity, and we’re building toward it with purpose. Whether through internal process automation or future product innovation, OneBridge is committed to staying at the forefront of the tools shaping the next generation of dealmaking.