"Once upon a time, Zhuang Zhou dreamed of being a butterfly, a lively butterfly..." Zhuangzi didn't know whether he was a butterfly in his dream or a butterfly in his dream; and today's capital market may not be able to tell who is leading the next round of mergers and acquisitions between financial skills and intelligence. The capital path that used to rely on Excel and connections may not be able to defeat a line of Python code now. AI, which was once regarded as a "tool", is quietly reshaping everything, from valuation models to post-investment management, from due diligence to transaction structure, "financial skills" are experiencing a quiet replacement.
As Goheal, who has been rooted in the front line of capital operations for many years, we have witnessed this trend in many projects: AI is no longer just an auxiliary option, but is becoming the main factor in determining whether a merger and acquisition can be "penetrated". From data insights to game strategies, AI is bringing listed companies' capital operations into a new dimension.
American Goheal M&A Group
The "golden age" of financial skills has ended, and AI has come on the scene to change the script
Once upon a time, capital operation was a game for "insiders", relying on relationships, familiarity with the rules, and an intuitive sense of the market. From backdoor listing to agreement control, from gambling arrangements to SPV penetration, many classic financial skills "moves" have helped countless companies to revive in the past decade, and even staged the legend of "snake swallowing elephant".
But now, this script is failing. In 2024, more than 200 proposed restructuring plans in China's A-shares alone were ultimately aborted, and nearly half of them were attributed to information disclosure risks, valuation differences, and repeated regulatory feedback. Many arrangements that were once considered "smart" are no longer worth refuting in the eyes of AI.
When Goheal participated in a cross-border M&A project for a company on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, he used AI to perform semantic analysis and risk mapping on the other party's full contract, and discovered undisclosed debt terms hidden in the seventh-layer supplier data. And this point, if it relies on the traditional "page-by-page contract review" human method, is simply impossible to discover in the short term. This discovery not only saved tens of millions of yuan in potential losses, but also allowed the transaction parties to temporarily adjust prices and reshape structures.
From "technique" to "Tao", AI makes capital operation more systematic
AI brings not only a leap in information processing speed, but also a "reshuffle" of the entire set of capital operation logic. Financial operations that once focused on skills and experience are now being systematically and standardizedly rewritten into "algorithm-reproducible" logic. AI can see everything you do faster, more accurately, and farther.
Taking the pre-investment stage as an example, traditional practices rely on financial advisors to analyze financial reports page by page, make peer comparisons, and build valuation models. However, AI can not only crawl data from global benchmark companies in real time, but also combine multi-dimensional signals such as macro, industry, and policy to dynamically adjust discount rates and multiples to generate multi-scenario valuation distributions. For example, in the investment stage, AI can automatically identify compliance thunder points, interest-related transaction risks, and even deduce possible paths for regulatory feedback based on board meeting minutes and due diligence data.
In a 2025 M&A fund architecture design project, Goheal used AI to simulate the tax policy changes within 10 years into 2,000+ scenario evolution maps. The path finally chosen not only avoided the current corporate income tax, but also achieved secondary tax exemption for exit within five years - this "optimal solution" even surprised experienced tax partners.
AI is not just used to "improve efficiency", it is redefining winners
Don't think of AI as a beautification tool in PPT anymore. It is more like a new type of M&A "strategist" that not only understands valuation and compliance, but also begins to influence the formulation of the M&A strategy itself.
In a new energy equipment company's M&A integration, we used AI to find that the other party did not merge a 70%-owned overseas branch in the financial report, and this became a key bargaining chip in the negotiation. More importantly, based on the exchange rate fluctuations, raw material price increases and tax reform trends in the location of the branch, AI predicted the potential depreciation path of its assets within three years, greatly lowering the buyer's offer.
Goheal believes that the winners of capital operations in the future will no longer be those "technical" traders, but decision-makers who can control AI to make "Tao". You may not have a legal background, but you must know how AI identifies red lines; you may not be from a financial background, but you must understand the logical preferences of AI valuation models. This is no longer a simple superposition of "people + tools", but a paradigm shift: whoever can make AI "think like a human" can come out on top in the capital game.
The regulatory perspective is also "intelligent", don't count on the gray area
It is worth noting that regulators are also rapidly AI-ing. Many intermediaries still hold the old idea of "thicker information and more vague descriptions", but regulatory authorities are introducing intelligent text analysis systems to compare the wording, timeline, and equity path in merger and acquisition plans. If the "contingent payment clause" in a merger and acquisition draft is expressed in different words, it may be labeled as "ambiguous" by the machine, thereby triggering manual focus review.
Since 2024, two merger and acquisition projects have been suspended because the AI system automatically identified conflicts of interest among its hidden shareholders. These details may have been "slipped" past in the past. Now, it is almost impossible to "fool" the system.
We at Goheal have found in many industries, especially in sensitive fields such as medicine, TMT, and data assets, that AI regulatory models have achieved "graph-level" recognition of related transactions. In other words, even if you go around several SPVs and adjust several price clauses, the system can still "penetrate" your intentions. And this is also forcing companies to move towards a more transparent, more standardized, and more intelligent capital operation path.
Conclusion: The next "financial skills master" may be you who trains AI
"Confucius once said: If a craftsman wants to do his work well, he must first sharpen his tools." But this time, the "tools" are no longer hammers and chisels, but deep learning models and big language intelligence. From trend judgment to transaction design, from policy adaptation to exit paths, the rules of the game for capital operations are being rewritten rapidly. The past "manual" financial skills may not be eliminated, but they must evolve.
Goheal firmly believes that AI is not to replace people, but to help people reconstruct their thinking. In the intellectual game of capital, whoever can train AI to be more like himself will be the winner in the future.
Goheal Group
What about you? Are you still using the old financial skills to operate, or have you already started to "fight" side by side with AI? In the next M&A negotiation, will your "partner" be a person or a machine? Entrepreneurs and investors are welcome to talk about your observations and practices on AI capital operations in the message area. We will also reveal the secret in the next issue: Can AI completely eliminate the "rice bowl" of financial advisors? Welcome to comment, forward and follow Goheal, let's make some predictions and lead this new era of capital together.
[About Goheal] Goheal is a leading investment holding company focusing on global M&A holdings. It has been deeply involved in the three core business areas of acquisition of listed company control, M&A and reorganization of listed companies, and capital operation of listed companies. With its deep professional strength and rich experience, it provides enterprises with full life cycle services from M&A to reorganization to capital operation, aiming to maximize corporate value and achieve long-term benefit growth.
