Inflexion comes top in first ever private equity AI Visibility Index

Leading mid-market private equity firm Inflexion has ranked top in the UK’s first AI Visibility Index for the sector.

Inflexion, which has UK offices in London and Manchester, came out first with a visibility rating of 28.1% followed by BGF (22.4%), LDC (21.8%) and Livingbridge (21.6%).

The research, carried out by B2B Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) agency Artios analysed the performance of 200 UK private equity companies between September 4 and October 5.

Each day for a month, Artios asked 100 questions across six popular AI platforms, collating a total of 19,694 responses.

The rest of the top 10 was completed by Backed, Hg, Permira, Cinven, CVC Capital Partners and Apax Partners. Some larger firms did not perform so well such as Thoma Bravo which ranks fifth in the world for capital raised but only came 106th in the AI Visibility Index.

The research considered four metrics – visibility (share of responses as a %), position (average position in searches), sentiment (how favourably a firm is mentioned) and, lastly, whether a firm’s own web domain is cited.

While Inflexion enjoyed a visibility rating of 28.1%, this contrasts sharply with the average visibility rating across all 200 firms of just 2.6%.

Almost 50 of the 200 firms did not appear in a single search response, meaning they are invisible to any potential investor researching potential private equity partners.

Andreas Voniatis, CEO of Artios, which has offices in the UK and US, said: “Founders and investors, just like the rest of us, are increasingly turning to AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini and others to ask questions.

“In the past, people may have been led by where a company came on the first page of a search engine’s rankings, but now having a strong and consistent presence on AI platform searches is a business essential.

“If your business isn’t showing up in AI searches then you are running the risk of never even making a shortlist for consideration. AI is now choosing the winners and losers in search.”

Andreas has worked in SEO and GEO marketing for more than 20 years and founded Artios in 2020. It has offices in London, New York and Florida.

Andreas said: “The research analysed the performance of 200 private equity firms and revealed that 20 firms took 55% of all mentions. Even the leader Inflexion only appears in one in four searches, while almost a quarter of firms don’t get a single mention.

“Global scale doesn’t count for anything either with only three of the biggest companies in the world making our top 20 and the others only having a median rank of 65.”

The questions posed in the month-long research were questions that a potential investor or adviser might ask when searching for a suitable private equity partner. None mentioned a specific firm or AI.

Andreas added: “The AI platforms are looking for businesses to provide them with proprietary data and original commentary.

“AI wants you to tell it something new. Therefore, the question for every content strategy is simple: what do you know that AI doesn’t? This is the most effective way to get cited in AI platform searches.

“The fastest route into an AI answer runs through the data AI already relies on, examples being the likes of Reddit, X and community forums. If this is central to your content strategy, you become the source AI turns to when your buyers ask.”

The Private Equity AI Visibility Index is here: The top 20 private equity firms for AI visibility.

See where each private equity firm ranks in the index.

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