What makes a capex request and its post-investment review a good AI dataset?
A capex request states a forecast: what the company will spend, the expected payback and the reasoning. The post-investment review records what happened. Together they form a decision with a checkable outcome, which is the kind of record agent developers look for when they want models that judge proposals instead of summarizing them.
For an operating partner, the useful point is that PE-backed companies with capex committees often hold both halves. You see the requests on the committee agenda and the lookbacks in the quarterly review, so you can name this record type in one sentence and raise it with the CFO.
What is in the pair?
| Half | Typical contents | What it teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Request | Business case, cost, payback assumptions, alternatives, risk section | How proposals are argued |
| Committee memo | Questions raised, conditions, approve or reject | How reviewers weigh a case |
| Change orders | Scope or budget changes during execution | Where plans drift |
| Post-investment review | Actual cost, delivery date, realized benefit, lessons | The outcome label |
| Rejected requests | Same structure, no spend | Negative examples |
Rejected and deferred requests are valuable. A set containing only approved projects is biased toward success.
Where do the documents sit?
Approval forms in a shared drive or workflow tool, committee decks, ERP project or fixed-asset records, finance variance reports, and email trails among plant, IT and finance leads. The fixed-asset register is the link: it ties a request to the asset that was capitalized.
The request-and-lookback screen for a portfolio company
- ☐A formal capex process exists, with thresholds and written requests.
- ☐Requests from at least five years are retained, including rejected ones.
- ☐Post-investment reviews exist for a meaningful share of projects, not just the largest.
- ☐Project numbers connect requests to ERP and asset records.
- ☐The company has 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded) and a sponsor who can authorize a license.
- ☐No lender, seller or customer contract bars sharing the documents.
If the lookbacks are the missing half, that is not a dead end. Some companies hold rich requests and thin reviews, and the inventory step shows what the full record set looks like.
When do you raise it?
| Calendar moment | What you are doing | What to say |
|---|---|---|
| Capex committee meeting | Reading the next request | "Do we keep the past requests and lookbacks together?" |
| Annual budget cycle | Locking capital plans | "Who owns the history of last year's projects?" |
| ERP or finance system change | Moving the project ledger | "Will the old request files be kept?" |
| Pre-exit preparation | Building the data room | "Is there a record set buyers of data might want?" |
At the pre-exit moment the data licensing conversation can also help the equity story, since you can show records as an asset. Keep the numbers out of it until an agreement is in place. No figures leave the company before then.
How does an introduction work?
- Raise the concept with the portfolio CEO or CFO, who is the likely sponsor but confirm who is authorized.
- Use the referral link or the form, with basic fit information only.
- SourceX qualifies on size, history, breadth and rights.
- The company lists its systems and record types in an inventory; the data inventory builder helps.
- Price and terms are agreed; SourceX review; nothing is binding until signed.
- Data moves only under an executed agreement and the company's authorization, with redaction agreed in advance.
You do not request project files or ask for the numbers.
What to say: "We keep capex requests and the reviews that say what happened. That pairing of forecast and outcome is rare outside companies. Some AI developers license it. Would it be worth an introduction, with nothing shared until you decide?"
Illustrative: a fictional packaging company with 200 employees runs a quarterly capex committee. Over seven years it has approved, deferred and rejected requests, each with a memo, and finance wrote a lookback after most completed projects. A reviewer can read the original payback argument next to the actual result. The operating partner never sees the figures; the company does the inventory.
What are the rights pitfalls?
Business cases often cite customer names, supplier pricing and lender covenants. Supplier contracts may include confidentiality terms. Board materials may be privileged. The company reviews all this in rights work, and anything it cannot license is excluded. See the fuller list on the who qualifies page.
How do rewards work for PE teams?
A reward becomes payable after SourceX has paid the referred company under its signed agreement and the payout conditions in the program terms are met, including finance approval and your tax and payment details. The reward rate is 25% of Actual Supplier Payout. The cumulative cap is $100,000 per referred company. The partner reward is never deducted from what the company receives. No reward is guaranteed. Check your fund documents and compliance policy on who receives any reward and how it is disclosed.
When should you skip it?
- The company has no formal capex process, only ad hoc approvals.
- It is under the size baseline or has a short history.
- Lenders or sellers control the records, as in a restructuring.
- Management refuses an exclusive license.
Where this fits
The portfolio view sits on the private equity operating partners page. Related record sets include sales handoff notes, GL coding histories, SQL query history and vendor bank-detail change verification. To understand how outcome-labeled records are used, read what post-training data is and the exception handling guide.
Next step
Register as a partner and pick the one portfolio company with the cleanest capex history for your first introduction.