Eldridge’s AI Overhaul: Why a $75bn Portfolio Is Rethinking Its Tools
Todd Boehly’s Eldridge—which controls roughly $75 billion in assets across more than 100 companies—is aggressively folding artificial intelligence into its operations, betting that AI is the key to staying ahead in a fast-changing business landscape. From reducing football injuries at Chelsea to reshaping film production at A24, the group is betting that its mix of unique data, hard-to-replicate physical assets and intellectual property will let its holdings adapt faster than rivals.
Rather than relying solely on commercial AI tools from large tech vendors, Eldridge has taken an alternative route. It purchased a 50 percent stake in Sudolabs, a European AI firm, gaining direct access to a dedicated team of about 70 AI specialists. The move, Eldridge says, ensures the group is not tied to a single technology provider and can build bespoke solutions across sectors as varied as defense, media, finance and sports.
Eldridge’s co-founder Tony Minella, who has led the AI strategy for the past two years, told the Financial Times that the goal is to give employees across the portfolio the tools and the mandate to fundamentally rethink how they work. Boehly added that firms with “unique data, physical assets and intellectual property that are hard to replicate” will have the best chance of thriving in the new technological era. The approach mirrors a broader wave among large investment houses that are rushing to protect their portfolios from AI-driven disruption—but Eldridge’s decision to buy into an AI firm sets it apart.
Why Boehly Chose an AI Acquisition Over Partnerships
The Sudolabs Acquisition: Independence from Big AI Vendors
Eldridge’s 50 percent stake in Sudolabs is more than a talent grab; it is a deliberate hedge against becoming dependent on a handful of dominant AI providers. By owning part of an AI development house, the group can tailor algorithms to the specific needs of Chelsea’s injury analytics, A24’s creative processes, or its defense holdings, without negotiating the commercial constraints of a partnership with a single tech giant. This “in-house but external” model gives Eldridge a pipeline of AI capabilities that can be scaled across 100 companies while preserving ownership of the underlying intellectual property.
Where Chelsea and A24 Stand to Gain
The early use cases show the breadth of the strategy. Chelsea is already using AI to analyze player injuries and reduce the time athletes spend off the pitch—a direct competitive edge in elite football where availability of star players can swing a season. A24, the studio behind hits like Everything Everywhere All at Once, has struck a $75 million research partnership with Google DeepMind to explore AI in film production. While that partnership links it to a tech titan, Eldridge’s control over Sudolabs gives the wider group the option to develop its own creative AI tools, potentially lowering costs and enhancing production speed without sharing sensitive content data with outside platforms.
A Trend, but a Different Playbook
Other large investment firms are also pushing AI, most commonly through commercial partnerships with the likes of OpenAI or Google. Eldridge is running a parallel playbook: buy a specialist firm, bring a dedicated team in-house, and drive AI adoption from a position of operational control. The risk is execution—whether a 70-person team can move fast enough across more than 100 different businesses. But the reward, if successful, is a portfolio that can modernise its core processes without handing a strategic advantage to a third-party technology vendor.
What Portfolio Managers and Portfolio Companies Should Watch
For investment firms and the companies they own, Eldridge’s moves offer a few concrete signals to consider:
- Acquiring a stake in an AI firm—rather than just licensing tools—can protect data ownership and give an investment group a lasting technology moat. Portfolio managers should evaluate whether their largest holdings have data sets that are valuable enough to justify a similar approach.
- Companies like Chelsea that already embed AI in core operations (injury analysis) demonstrate that rapid payback is possible in areas where small performance gains carry outsized financial value. For sports and media holdings, the message is clear: AI is moving from hype to the training ground and the editing suite.
- Minella’s statement that employees must “reimagine their workflows” suggests that AI adoption within a conglomerate fails without cultural buy-in. Leadership teams at portfolio companies should expect a top-down push to redesign roles, not just plug in new software.
- The A24–DeepMind deal shows that even when a stake in an AI firm is held, partnerships with tech giants may still be necessary for cutting-edge research. Competitors should watch whether Eldridge gradually brings that research in-house via Sudolabs, reducing reliance on external AI labs over time.
Risk & Opportunity Assessment
| Commercial Risk | Medium | Executing AI integration across more than 100 diverse companies—ranging from a football club to a film studio—carries significant cost, talent and change-management risk. If the Sudolabs team cannot scale quickly enough, the expected efficiency gains may be delayed. |
| Competitive Risk | Medium | If Eldridge succeeds, portfolio companies like Chelsea (injury analytics) and A24 (AI-assisted production) could gain advantages that are hard for rivals to match. Conversely, if the initiative falters, competitors that opt for proven AI vendors may overtake them. |
| Regulatory Risk | Low | No immediate regulatory concerns are apparent; AI use in sports and film production does not currently trigger heavy regulation outside of general data-protection rules. |
| Reputation Risk | Low | Boehly and Eldridge are not directly in the consumer spotlight. However, if AI-generated content at A24 were to spark a creative backlash or if injury algorithms at Chelsea were to be blamed for a high-profile misdiagnosis, reputation could suffer. |
| Technology Disruption | High | The entire portfolio is betting that AI will fundamentally alter how work is done in finance, defense, media and sport. Eldridge’s purchase of Sudolabs is a direct response to the threat that companies that ignore AI will become uncompetitive. |
| Commercial Opportunity | High | Bringing AI ownership in-house through the Sudolabs stake creates the potential for custom, high-margin tools that can be shared across the portfolio, lowering costs and opening new revenue streams—for instance, licensing internally developed AI models to other investment firms. |
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