Our Story
Built by a transaction professional who lived the problem
Twenty-plus years advising on M&A, infrastructure, and corporate transactions taught me one thing: the risks that hurt clients are the ones everyone missed. I built Acquilens.ai so nothing gets missed.
John Stroud
Founder · Digit Advisory
The origin
I’ve spent over twenty years in transaction advisory and financial modelling — from Ernst & Young’s Financial Modelling Groups in London and Sydney, to corporate & structured finance at Babcock & Brown, to founding Digit Advisory in 2009. Digit has worked on some of the largest infrastructure transactions in Australia and New Zealand — AquaSure, Transmission Gully, Canberra Metro, valuations and refinancings for four of the eight largest Australian airports.
Across every transaction, one thing kept repeating: the risks that hurt clients weren’t the ones we found. They were the ones buried on page 847 of a data room no one had time to read cover-to-cover. Even experienced teams — working flat out, at 11pm, with specialists stretched across three mandates — can only review so much inside a transaction timeline.
Risks got found late. Some didn’t get found until after completion, when the cost was exponentially higher. I watched clients overpay for businesses with material liabilities sitting in plain sight in the data room. Not for lack of effort — for lack of time and coverage.
Acquilens.ai is the answer I wish I’d had for twenty years. Every document, every workstream, every transaction — comprehensively reviewed in hours instead of weeks, with every finding cited back to the source. So the next advisor doesn’t miss what I almost missed.
Our Mission
Democratise due diligence quality for every advisor — not just the firms with the biggest teams.
The mid-market deserves the same rigour as the bulge bracket. A boutique advisory firm running a $30M transaction should have access to the same analytical depth as a global firm with a 40-person transaction team.
That's the world we're building. Twenty-five specialist agents. Every workstream. Every transaction — regardless of deal size, team size, or geography.
Where we're going
I'm building toward a world where AI is a standard part of every transaction process — not a novelty, but an expectation. Where advisors are embarrassed to run a transaction without it, the same way they'd be embarrassed to deliver a report without a spell-check.
In the near term, we're expanding the depth of each agent workstream, building deeper integrations with the data room platforms advisors already use, and developing workflow tools that connect AI analysis directly into the reporting process.
The long game is comprehensive, high-quality due diligence — accessible to every advisor who serves an entrepreneur, a founder, or a business owner trying to navigate the most significant transaction of their life.
Want to be part of what we're building?
Join the waitlist to get early access and help shape the product alongside the team.