In 2025 AI-washing stopped being a marketing sin and became an enforcement target. The buyers who adjusted their diligence are deducting for it. The ones who didn't are discovering it after close.
Counsel now explicitly advise buyers to "retain outside experts to conduct diligence into AI claims" (DLA Piper; Weil). If the target you acquire turns out to have been AI-washing, its exposure becomes your exposure.
Full technical audits run $50k–250k+ per engagement and take weeks — proportionate for a nine-figure deal, a non-starter for the $2–7M acquisitions where searchers and PE bolt-ons live. Free point tools scan one dimension and write no memo. In between: nothing that answers the AI question, quantifies key-person risk, and delivers a cited memo at LOI stage for a fixed fee.
That's the instrument Assay is. 45% of dealmakers call technical review the most expensive and onerous part of diligence; small-deal DD budgets run $25–75k in total. A $15k screen fits inside the budget — and tells you whether the $100k audit is even warranted.
Every incumbent alternative is a SaaS upload or a consultancy that wants the code shipped to them. Sellers stall on that for weeks — source code is the crown jewels. Assay's engine installs nothing and phones nowhere, so it can run on the seller's own machine while they watch. Seller consent stops being your critical path.
The screen, in one sentence: the AI-substantiation and key-person screen you can run on the seller's machine, in days, before spending $100k on a full audit — it clears the deal or flags it for the expensive humans.
Tell us about the deal. If a screen isn't the right instrument, we'll say so.
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