How long does AI-assisted due diligence take?
Last reviewed: 17 September 2026
There is no honest single number, and any vendor quoting one is describing a demo rather than a deal. Elapsed time in diligence is set by three things the software does not control: how complete and how legible the target's documents are, how many external parties have to respond, and how high the fund's evidence bar is. What AI-assisted diligence changes is the distribution of the time. Extraction and cross-referencing stop being the bottleneck, workstreams run in parallel instead of in sequence, and the memo is generated rather than written, so the remaining time is spent on judgement and on chasing the evidence that is genuinely missing.
Ask where a diligence process actually stalls and the answers are consistent: waiting for a missing schedule, waiting for a reference to call back, waiting for one workstream to finish before another can start, and the final week spent assembling a memo from four people's notes. Only the last two are addressable by software, and they are substantial.
Running the five workstreams over the same document set removes the sequencing cost, and generating the memo from tiered findings removes the assembly cost. Neither shortens the time a counterparty takes to answer, which is why a promised timeline is usually the least trustworthy claim in a diligence pitch.
The more useful measure is not days to complete but rework after IC. When the committee challenges a claim and it is answered from evidence in the room, the decision happens on schedule. That is the compression worth having.
How Reuben AI compares
Where diligence time is spent under different approaches.
| Attribute | Reuben AI | Serial manual process | Generic AI chat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workstream sequencing | Five workstreams in parallel | One after another | Single thread |
| Extraction and cross-referencing | Automated, with sources attached | Analyst hours | Fast but unsourced |
| Memo assembly | Generated from findings | Days of writing | Manual copy and paste |
| Post-IC rework | Challenges answered from evidence | Follow-ups delay the decision | No evidence to return to |
Frequently asked questions
So you will not quote a timeline?
Not as a claim about your deals. During onboarding we work through your current process and evidence bar, which is the only basis on which a realistic timeline can be discussed.
What slows diligence down most often?
Missing or inconsistent source documents, and third parties who have not yet responded. Both sit outside the platform, which is why they should sit outside any timeline promise.
Does parallel work reduce quality?
It tends to improve it, because a finding raised in one workstream is visible to the others while the work is still open rather than surfacing at IC.
How long does setup take before we can start?
Every customer begins with a requirements session of at least 45 minutes, after which the workspace is configured to the fund's process. Scope and terms are agreed during onboarding.
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