By Jeff Pietras, VP, Head of Private Equity Partnerships
Last week I joined operating partners, value creation teams and investors in New York at the PEI Operating Partners Forum.
My biggest takeaway from the conference: the value creation conversation is moving closer to the core revenue base with heavy emphasis on practical AI applications and operational performance.
The focus is shifting from finding the next big idea to identifying where existing value is trapped inside portfolio companies and putting the operating discipline in place to unlock it.
Research shared by Blue Ridge Partners reinforces that point. Among 72 operating partners they interviewed, 91% cited go-to-market (GTM) fundamentals as a core value creation priority, followed by AI adoption (85%), talent and change management (73%) and pricing (46%).
Perhaps more interesting: AI hasn't displaced the fundamentals. Rather, it’s reinforcing their importance. The conversation is shifting from, “where can we use AI?” toward "what business problems are we trying to solve?” and asking how AI can help solve them – with measurable outcomes and accountability. As the research put it, “AI is the accelerant, not the destination.”
And execution remains the hard part. Blue Ridge Partners estimates that knowing what to do represents about 25% of the challenge, while implementing and sustaining change represents the other 75%.
The AI conversation is already moving one step further
The AI discussion took that theme one step further during an evening dinner discussion we hosted with Bain & Company focused on the future of software, AI and agentic commerce.
While much of the AI conversation today centers on internal productivity and efficiency, Bain’s research points to a potentially larger shift: AI agents are beginning to influence what consumers buy, where they buy it and how they pay.
According to Bain, personal GenAI usage increased from roughly 53% in September 2025 to 73% in April 2026. Looking ahead, Bain estimates $300 billion to $500 billion of U.S. commerce value could be initiated, influenced or completed by AI agents by 2030, representing roughly 15% - 25% of e-commerce value.
For software investors, that creates some important questions: Who owns the customer relationship? Who owns the transaction? And who captures the economics?
Bain highlighted three priorities for software companies preparing for this transition:
- Remain discoverable as agents become another distribution layer
- Protect ownership of the transaction and payments economics
- Adapt payments and risk infrastructure for machine-driven commerce
Trust remains a constraint. Only about 33% of consumers surveyed trust AI to handle payment information securely, while roughly 32% would allow AI to complete a transaction without their confirmation, according to Checkout.com’s Agentic Commerce 2026 report.
The transition won’t happen overnight. But it does suggest that payments, identity, authorization, fraud and transaction ownership are increasingly strategic issues for software platforms that are worth considering today.
Embedded payments: An opportunity hiding in plain sight
These conversations connect to an opportunity we explored during our PEI session, From Strategy to EBITDA: Closing the Embedded Payments Value Gap.
For many software companies, embedded payments are already an established part of the business model. The question now is whether those businesses are capturing the full economic potential of the payments capabilities they’ve built.
Our latest research suggests that meaningful EBITDA opportunity may exist within the current customer base through improvements across five key areas: merchant adoption, retention, payment volume, pricing and operating efficiency.
These opportunities map directly to the priorities operating partners already manage: GTM execution, product experience, customer retention, monetization and cost efficiency.
As AI begins reshaping how customers discover, select and transact, protecting and optimizing payments economics could become even more important.
We’ll explore these opportunities in greater detail in our research report, Closing the Embedded Payments Value Gap, which includes a framework for identifying performance gaps and quantifying their potential EBITDA impact.
So, what should investors be asking?
My takeaway from my time in New York isn't that PE firms need another long list of initiatives. It's almost the opposite.
Find one or two measurable sources of trapped value, quantify the EBITDA opportunity, establish ownership and execute.
For SaaS-enabled businesses, I would add payments to that diagnostic:
- How much of the eligible customer base has adopted payments?
- How much payment volume remains outside the platform?
- When was payments pricing last benchmarked?
- Are support costs scaling faster than payments revenue?
- Who owns payments growth?
- How much EBITDA is still sitting inside the payments business we already own?
That last question deserves more attention. The next chapter of embedded payments isn't simply about enabling more SaaS companies to accept payments. It's about treating payments as an operating asset that can be measured, benchmarked and optimized over the hold period.
And as AI and agentic commerce begin changing how customers discover, choose and transact, protecting and expanding that economic layer could become even more important.
That intersection of software, payments and portfolio value creation is where I expect some of the most interesting investor conversations to happen next.
Evaluating a portfolio company or sourcing a new investment that requires due diligence?
Global Payments Investor Partnerships team helps private equity and venture capital firms evaluate, optimize and scale payments strategies across their software portfolios. From investment due diligence and vendor selection to post-investment value creation strategies, our team provides direct access to payments expertise that helps drive stronger operating outcomes. Get in touch today.