A Chatbot Just Did an Investment Banker’s Job

When CVC Capital Partners put Greek eCommerce platform Skroutz up for sale earlier this year, it skipped investment bankers and used artificial intelligence to run the process instead, The Wall Street Journal reported.

CVC sent prospective buyers a link to a data portal that functioned as an investment memo and a chatbot answered questions on financials and due diligence; more complex issues were escalated to the management team for direct discussion. Blackstone agreed on May 11 to acquire a majority stake in Skroutz in a deal that values the eCommerce marketplace at 635 million euros ($747 million) including debt, Reuters reported.

CVC manages roughly 205 billion euros ($180 billion) in assets, ranking among the largest private equity firms globally. Skroutz operates Greece’s leading eCommerce marketplace with roughly 9,000 merchants listing more than 12 million products and approximately 2.5 million active users. The platform has since expanded into Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria, according to Blackstone.

Under CVC’s ownership, Skroutz evolved from a price-comparison site into a marketplace with logistics, fulfillment and a licensed FinTech arm. “We are proud of all that Skroutz has achieved during our productive partnership,” Alex Fotakidis, CVC’s managing partner and head of Greece, said in the deal announcement.

Functions AI Took Over in the Skroutz Sale

A traditional sell-side advisory engagement covers a range of functions: preparing the information memorandum that describes the business to potential buyers, managing the data room where due diligence materials are housed, coordinating buyer outreach, fielding questions on behalf of management and controlling information flow throughout the process.

Had CVC hired a traditional investment bank, a deal the size of Skroutz could have generated roughly 9 million euros in sell-side advisory fees, based on the 1.48% median fee for deals over $100 million reported by Deal Point Data, according to a separate Wall Street Journal report.  Global M&A advisory fees reached $24 billion in the first half of 2026, up 18% year over year, according to LSEG, The Investment Executive reported.

The CVC approach replaced the information memo and question-answering functions with a data portal and a chatbot, according to the Journal. That covers a significant portion of what a junior and mid-level banking team handles during the early and middle stages of a sell-side process: drafting, fielding diligence queries and coordinating information flow. What it did not replace were the later-stage functions that still required human judgment, including valuation, negotiation and deal structuring, which were handled by the management team and the parties themselves.

What the Model Points Toward for Investment Banks

The Skroutz deal is a data point, not a trend. CVC is a sophisticated firm with the internal resources and deal experience to manage a sale process independently. Most sellers, particularly in the middle market, lack those capabilities and still need advisers to run buyer outreach, manage process timelines and negotiate on their behalf.

If AI can handle information delivery and early diligence Q&A reliably, the value of a full banking engagement shifts toward the judgment-intensive work that remains: positioning the asset, running a competitive process, navigating buyer relationships and structuring the transaction.

PYMNTS reported that Goldman Sachs is deploying AI agents to automate transaction reconciliation, client vetting and onboarding, work that sits on the operational side of banking rather than the advisory side.