AI was a popular topic on investment banks' Q2 earnings calls

AI was a popular topic on investment banks' Q2 earnings calls

Rod James

Tue, August 11, 2026 at 11:51 PM GMT+3 3 min read

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Jenna O'Malley/PitchBook News

The subject of artificial intelligence featured prominently in investment banks' second-quarter earnings calls. Equity analysts were keen to know the impact the technology was having on the M&A market and on banks' own businesses, and how much implementing the technology is likely to cost.

Here are some highlights from the earnings calls of the boutique banks that drive sponsor-backed deal flow.

John Weinberg, Evercore chairman and CEO

"AI is the source of a great deal of M&A discussion."

On the one hand, Weinberg said, the rapid spread of AI technology is making strategic buyers question whether they need to make "stronger and bigger" acquisitions to compete with their peers. On the other hand, Evercore's restructuring business is holding more conversations with software companies whose valuations have taken a hit and are considering restructuring their debt, extending maturities or raising further capital.

The pause in the software M&A market, triggered by the AI-induced pricing correction in February and March, has abated, with more sponsors considering the sale of their best tech assets, Weinberg said.

Paul Taubman, chairman and CEO of PJT Partners

"There's no doubt that not everyone will be a winner."

This means more take-privates of "healthy companies that can't seem to regain their prior valuations" and more companies feeling they need to be part of a bigger entity to protect their business models, Taubman said.

AI will also exacerbate a problem that private equity firms thought was fading: the challenge of generating distributions for investors, Taubman said. This could drive monetization activity through means other than selling businesses outright, such as continuation fund deals, which allow PE firms to extend their hold on businesses while providing an off-ramp for investors who want it.

PJT also expects to benefit from the need for more "creative financings" of data center projects, which involve capital markets teams and industry bankers working together.

Peter Orszag, CEO and chairman of Lazard

"The tools continue to advance quite rapidly."

Lazard is already using AI to match strategic investors with sources of private capital, including insurance money, Orszag said. The acquisition of Campbell Lutyens, a boutique investment bank focused on helping PE firms raise funds and execute secondary deals, will give Lazard a richer dataset to focus its machine learning tools on and provide "commercially relevant and valuable" information on fund managers and institutional investors, he said.

Orszag also talked about using AI to serve clients in "new and innovative ways." He did not elaborate on how this might work.

Scott Adelson, CEO of Houlihan Lokey

"A 10% improvement is the enemy of a 10x improvement."

Adelson said members of the executive team at Houlihan Lokey are "big believers" in AI's potential. The bank is looking to adopt tools with transformative potential, rather than making incremental improvements, Adelson said.

Adelson said that AI is already driving down pricing in some of its businesses, including in its valuations business, one of the largest in the sponsor-backed market. At the same time, AI has led to a massive expansion of the total addressable market for Houlihan's valuations team, driving strong growth even with weaker pricing power.

Chad Abraham, chairman and CEO of Piper Sandler Companies

"I think we're gonna continue to be measured given how quickly that technology is evolving."

Piper Sandler has been "rolling things out in batches rather than wholesale" and auditing the effectiveness of these AI tools as they go along, Abraham said.

The rollout of AI will contribute to higher costs in 2026 and 2027, added President Deb Schoneman.

"I think it's just about good hygiene, good control, good transparency internally in terms of how we're choosing to deploy those resources," she said.

This article originally appeared on PitchBook News