Australian AI virtual data room company Ansarada is expanding its artificial intelligence capabilities, with new tools designed to automate due diligence tasks, identify risks across multiple documents and help businesses and advisers navigate the merger and acquisition process.
The company is developing new features for its operating system, including automated question-and-answer workflows and document analysis tools, as it looks to reduce the manual work involved in transactions while maintaining strict AI security and governance controls.
The latest developments build on the company's existing AI assistant, AiDA, which helps deal teams search documents, retrieve information and summarise key details within their secure virtual data room, said Managing Director at Ansarada, Justin Smith.
"What we're really seeing in dealmaking is a rapid pace of change. Teams need to get the right information quickly without spending hours digging around in folders. AiDA is helping them ask questions of not only the documents but data in natural language that can get answers from the room in seconds."
The roadmap includes intelligent question prioritisation and automated draft responses, alongside document analysis feature Review with AiDA (available in Beta).
Smith said the developments reflect a broader shift in how AI is being integrated into dealmaking, moving beyond individual document searches towards analysing information across entire data rooms using AI.
"What has been available so far is document by document," he said. "This allows you to think about it as data that you've uploaded into the data room."
"In OS Bondi 3.0, we're moving from documents to data, and that's a real big change here."
Automating due diligence
Due diligence is a time-intensive component of mergers and acquisitions, often requiring advisers, lawyers, investors and corporate teams to review extensive documentation and respond to myriad questions from prospective buyers or other parties.
"The Q&A process is one of the most time-consuming parts of the due diligence process: thousands of questions coming in from external parties and their lawyers and their advisers. If you've ever been in that process and trying to run a business, it's an incredibly stressful time."
Ansarada is seeking to streamline this process by empowering teams to use AiDA to identify similar questions submitted during due diligence and generate draft responses for human review.
OS Bondi 3.0 will extend these capabilities through intelligent question-and-answer prioritisation and automated drafting.
The system will identify priority questions submitted by multiple parties, including potential buyers and investors, before preparing draft answers using relevant documents and other material information in the data room.
The feature is intended to help data room administrators and their teams respond more quickly without removing existing review processes.
Human reviewers will remain responsible for assessing the proposed answers, checking the supporting evidence and approving information before it is shared with external parties.
"AiDA is doing a lot of the manual work; it's helping draft a lot of those answers, but the reviewer gets to review that," Smith said.
It will reduce the time spent searching through documents and preparing responses, allowing deal teams to focus on higher-value decisions.
"What really matters in dealmaking, from a buyer's standpoint or corporate leader, is judgement. Getting them more time on making the right judgement, the right calls to move a deal forward, is what AiDA is allowing them to do."
The changes are expected to be particularly relevant during transactions, when businesses must manage large volumes of information while continuing to operate under significant time pressure.
Moving beyond individual documents
Another development is Review with AiDA, which is in early beta and will initially be available to a limited audience.
Review with AiDA is designed to analyse information across multiple documents within a data room, rather than requiring users to examine each file individually.
For example, deal teams could use it to review multiple contracts, compare clauses, examine addresses or analyse remuneration details across a collection of documents.
This could help identify inconsistencies, missing information and potential issues more quickly, particularly when reviewing large volumes of contractual material.
Smith said the shift towards analysing documents as a collective dataset represents an important stage in the evolution of OS Bondi.
"That will be a game changer for people looking at inconsistencies or looking at potential issues faster," he said.
Instead of simply helping users locate information in individual files, the technology is intended to identify patterns and relationships across the material available to a deal team.
For organisations conducting complex transactions, this could make it easier to spot discrepancies that might otherwise require substantial manual review.
My Documents is another planned feature, which will provide users with a personal file area where they can securely share and analyse documents before adding them to the indexed material used in due diligence.
Ansarada is further developing its subscription model to allow additional authorised participants, including buyers, to purchase AiDA access packs.
This will expand access to AI capabilities across both the sell side and buy side of a transaction, subject to the relevant permissions.
"Much like you do in large language models, you have credits and subscriptions. We'll be allowing people to buy AiDA packs, and that is going to help the entire deal teams on the sell side and buy side maximise this fantastic opportunity, which is AI that is in the secure environment."
Security, governance remain critical
While Ansarada is expanding its use of AI, its approach differs from using general-purpose large language models outside a secure transaction environment.
The value of a virtual data room extends beyond document storage, particularly when transactions involve sensitive commercial information and substantial capital.
A key requirement is maintaining an auditable record of activity, including which documents were accessed, what information was shared and how participants interacted with the platform.
This record can be important if a transaction encounters disputes or questions about whether information was disclosed appropriately.
Ansarada is seeking to extend those protections to its AI tools, with the technology operating within its own cloud environment and infrastructure. The system respects existing access permissions, ensuring users receive only information they are authorised to see.
This includes differentiating between administrators, guests and buy-side participants, while allowing customers to control who can access AI functionality and revoke access when required, in a defensible by design system, in which AI interactions remain subject to the governance requirements of the underlying platform.
Ansarada's language models do not learn directly from the substantive information contained in customers' data room documents, instead using activity patterns and interactions to inform its capabilities.
For businesses handling confidential information during a transaction, maintaining control over data, as well as how it is used, is critical.
"Our large language models aren't learning from the actual data that's in the documentation that's in the data room," Smith said. "It's learning from the critical clicks and the trends that happen, not by the actual data."
Making AI dealmaking capabilities more accessible to SMBs
Ansarada's longer-term plans extend beyond automating existing workflows, with Smith identifying more proactive assistance as a key area of development over the next 12 months.
The company wants to help businesses of different sizes access AI-supported transaction management, including smaller organisations and founders preparing to sell a business for the first time.
Smith said Ansarada's experience across approximately 60,000 transactions could help the platform identify common patterns, potential risks and information that businesses may need to prepare at different stages of a deal.
"Proactive AiDA can help guide you along like an agent: these are the things that you should be doing at this stage in the deal. Here's what I've highlighted. Here's your risks. Here's your pieces of material information that you may be missing."
Rather than waiting for users to ask questions, a future version of AiDA could proactively highlight missing information, flag risks and suggest actions based on the stage of a transaction.
For example, the system could identify documents a prospective buyer might request during due diligence or highlight areas that need attention before a business progresses further through a sale.
It could also help sellers understand which investors or prospective buyers are engaging most actively with the transaction, allowing teams to prioritise their attention.
Smith said the goal would be to provide useful insights without replacing professional advisers or making decisions on their behalf.
"We're not replacing advisers. We're not giving advice," he said. "We're just talking about the data room and where you are in your journey to help you do that, and highlighting insights that could help you get a better outcome."
Instead, the technology focuses on information within the data room and the transaction's progress, helping users make better-informed decisions.
Smith said the longer-term opportunity was to give smaller businesses access to the same kinds of secure technology and transaction insights available to larger organisations.
As AI becomes more deeply integrated into deal management, Ansarada is positioning its platform around a combination of automation, proactive insights and established governance controls.
"Every release we're doing is building AiDA more deeply into that operating system that is Ansarada's OS. It's becoming really part of their team."
The challenge will be to reduce the administrative burden of complex transactions without compromising the confidentiality, accountability and human judgement required to complete them.