Early AI investor Elad Gil finds his next big bet: AI-powered roll-ups

Elad Gil started betting on AI before most of the world took notice. By the time investors began grasping the implications of ChatGPT, Gil had already written seed checks to startups like Perplexity, Character.AI, and Harvey. Now, as the early winners of the AI wave become clearer, the renowned “solo” VC is increasingly focused on a fresh opportunity: using AI to reinvent traditional businesses and scale them through roll-ups. The idea is to identify opportunities to buy mature, people-intensive outfits like law firms and other professional services firms, help them scale through AI, then use the improved margins to acquire other such enterprises and repeat the process. He has been at it for three years. “It just seems so obvious,” said Gil over a Zoom call earlier this week. “This type of generative AI is very good at understanding language, manipulating language, manipulating text, producing text. And that’s audio, that’s video, that includes coding, sales outreach, and different b ... Read full article.