Senior IT, security, and AI leadership for PE-backed portfolios. Diligence, post-deal integration, portfolio-wide oversight.
AI diligence and value-creation support across multi-company PE portfolios, from pre-investment assessment through programme launch and exit-readiness. Your portfolio companies need senior IT, security, and AI governance, but none of them justify three separate full-time hires. One accountable operator covers the full scope.
Three situations where the work pays directly.
Pre-investment diligence
You're looking at an asset where IT, security, AI governance, or cloud spend could materially affect value. Three to five days of focused diligence, a readiness heatmap, quantified priority use cases, and a 100-day plan for the post-close quarter.
Portfolio value creation
One or more portfolio companies are stuck on IT, security, or AI investments that should be generating returns and aren't. I step in as interim CIO to unstick the operating model, vendor controls, and accountability, sometimes for a single portfolio company, sometimes across a platform.
Exit readiness
A portfolio company is heading toward sale. Buyers will dig into IT maturity, security posture, AI governance, and cloud cost discipline. I make those diligence areas into clean answers instead of last-minute scrambles.
Work done at PE scale.
Shared controls, cleaner exits
Built a shared control library, standard KPIs, common vendor standards, board dashboards, incident playbooks, DR testing, and a light operating model for local IT leaders ahead of planned exits. Outcome: tool consolidation drove run-rate savings, buyer diligence materially easier across multiple exits, and high-risk pentest findings across the portfolio fell 63%.
Interim CIO. 5 AI use cases live in 9 months.
Interim CIO mandate after separate business units had started buying AI tools with no governance, no shared data standards, and no credible ROI case for the board. Built the board AI thesis, operating model, vendor controls, and phased roadmap across support, bid writing, finance, and service delivery. Outcome: 5 AI use cases in production inside 9 months, 18% reduction in back-office effort, and a board-approved 24-month AI investment plan.
AI diligence heatmap, programmes launched within a quarter.
Led AI diligence and value-creation planning across the portfolio to identify which assets could realise measurable benefit in the first 12 months. Produced an AI readiness heatmap, quantified priority use cases, and wrote 100-day plans for the highest-priority businesses. Outcome: two companies launched programmes within a quarter, delivering measurable first-year value.
Enterprise deals unblocked, cloud spend down 19%
Interim/deputy CISO/CTO/CIO mandate after enterprise deals stalled on security reviews, AWS and Azure costs had drifted, and control ownership was fragmented across the group. Unified identity, logging, endpoint security, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 programmes, cloud landing zones, vendor risk, and board reporting. Outcome: stalled enterprise deals reopened, cloud spend down 19%, critical vulnerabilities older than 30 days down 92%, and cyber insurance renewal held flat against a projected 38% increase.
The full engagement portfolio is available on request.
Priced to the portfolio.
Portfolio IT and AI Diligence Sprint: 250-350K DKK per engagement, scoped to portfolio complexity. 3-5 intensive days plus 1-2 weeks of deliverables. Typical scope covers one platform (2-4 portfolio companies) or one pre-investment target with related portfolio context. Exact pricing is set after an introductory call with the deal team. Example: a 5-company portfolio on Standard Retainer at 15% portfolio discount runs approximately 275-320K DKK/month across all five, or roughly 3.3-3.8M DKK annually.
Behzad Motaghi
15+ years of IT, security, and AI leadership across Innofactor, Crayon, and Sentia. IT, security, cloud, governance, and AI advisory mandates spanning growing companies through enterprise scale. Azure Solutions Architect Expert. PRINCE2 Practitioner. Based in Denmark, working across the Nordics, UK, and EEA. Deep work in PE contexts: interim CIO at a PE-backed platform, AI diligence across PE portfolios, cross-portfolio controls and exit-readiness work.
Have a portfolio situation worth a conversation?
Thirty minutes with me and your deal team. I'll tell you whether a diligence sprint drives a measurable outcome, what it would cost, and how fast it could start.
Or email directly: bm@accelcomply.com