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    Practice 01

    Technology Due Diligence

    You're buying into a sector nobody in the room can technically judge, and the IC needs an opinion it can price.

    Commercially-focused, PE-fluent

    The work

    Scope proportionate to the deal. Plain English for non-technical readers. Every recommendation carries a cost.

    Twelve scope areas, sized to the deal. We start with the foundations, so what we recommend is something the company can actually implement, and every finding carries a cost, an owner and a date. Our partners have run global technology functions, and the integration is costed here, before you sign.

    A short overview of our approach. Read on for the detail.

    AI and generated code

    Cheap to build is not the same as cheap to own.

    Targets are now arriving with estates built fast on generative tooling. That is not a lower risk than slow, hand-written software. It is a less legible one: more systems, less institutional memory, and obsolescence risk arriving sooner. We treat it as its own assessment area, priced like everything else.

    • Real or demo: what the value-creation plan assumes about AI, against what is actually in production
    • Provenance and IP ownership of generated code, plus licence and data lineage exposure
    • Replicability: ability, cost and time for a competitor to rebuild it now that tooling is cheap
    • Run cost at three times the volume, and the governance needed to keep the estate legible after close

    Diligence inside MERGE

    How a diligence runs.

    Diligence is where MERGE begins. Map reads the estate and keeps reading it into the deal, Estimate costs the integration and the run-state, and Go delivers the plan in the report. This is what a diligence looks like on your deal.

    • Reports that withstand the toughest investment scrutiny.
    • Minimal disruption to the target's management team.
    • Reporting is ongoing throughout the engagement, not saved for the readout.

    1. 01

      Outside In Assessment

      Independent read of the target's technology, products, cyber posture and external risks.

    2. 02

      Information Requests

      Documentation, architecture, security, operations, product and financial information, structured and tracked.

    3. 03

      Management Interviews

      Meet the leadership team to validate strategy, delivery capability and the key assumptions in the thesis.

    4. 04

      Tech and Product Assessment

      Architecture, scalability, cybersecurity, engineering, AI and product maturity, assessed against the plan.

    5. 05

      Commercial Challenge

      Test the investment thesis by linking technology findings to commercial value, cost and growth.

    6. 06

      Report and Present

      A clear, actionable report with investment risks, opportunities and recommendations, each with a number and an owner.

    Next practice

    AI in the Deal