NEW YORK, Sept. 28, 2026 — Independent Sponsors and emerging investment firms compete for the same deals as established private equity, without the in-house origination and value creation teams, or data infrastructure, those larger or more established investment firms run. XS Global (“XS”) launches today to close the capability gap between leaner investment firms and those with deep operational infrastructure, founded by technology veterans Nick Hunter and Akash Patel.
A 2026 study from the Institute for Private Capital and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School1 found average gross returns of 2.9x invested capital and a 29% IRR on exited Independent Sponsor-led deals of the deals in their study, ahead of comparable institutional buyouts, without a corresponding increase in loss frequency or severity. Citrin Cooperman’s 2026 Independent Sponsor Report2 backs this up from the Sponsor side: among those who have had a liquidity event, 84% of the Sponsors in their study returned 3x or more to their respective investors this year, up from 57% in 2023.
XS was formed on the hypothesis that even without the value-creation resources larger firms have, Independent Sponsors and smaller firms have been able to deliver alpha, and that with these capabilities this part of the market would continue to evolve and consistently deliver strong performance. Therefore, XS has created the internal capacity required to compete on an institutional level, including origination from thesis-to-close to add-on activity, live data across every company owned, and deeper operating expertise.
The XS system is an integrated value creation platform that maps markets end-to-end and scores them against an investor’s deal prospects, EBITDA focus, investment thesis, and portfolio company M&A roadmap, at a scale otherwise reserved for large PE firms with large analyst headcounts.
Nick Hunter and Akash Patel co-founded XS after years of building enterprise technology together at pureIntegration. Hunter spent over 28 years working across media, adtech, and software engineering. A founding member of pureIntegration, he helped scale it to $20M in revenue and 150 professionals and led its pivot to a product model. Patel brings over two decades of enterprise systems integration and technology program leadership from Deloitte Consulting, AT&T, and Walgreens Boots Alliance, helping deliver $200M in new revenue through data modernization.
XS has launched with an existing solution suite that was originally ideated and incubated by a North American private equity firm, with early clients being onboarded onto the solutions today.
Speaking to their founding thesis, Nick Hunter, Co-founder of XS, said, “The largest funds don’t win on judgement alone; they win on the capability they build around it. XS gives that capability to the firms that could never afford to build it, allowing a lean investment firm to run its deals and companies the way an investment firm of two hundred does.”
Independent Sponsors, family offices, and boutique investment firms are some of the most active lower-middle market (“LMM”) agents, building essential services businesses into revenue-generating and acquisitive enterprises, and bringing those platforms to the institutional market. Capital is following them there: Citrin Cooperman’s 2026 Independent Sponsor Report2 found that institutional LPs are increasingly treating Independent Sponsor-led deals as one of the few ways to access LMM returns at scale.
The same Citrin Cooperman report found that most Independent Sponsor firms run with two or three principals and minimal staff, limiting both the opportunities they can evaluate and the portfolio companies they can actively manage, even as larger PE firms push further into the lower-middle market for the same value creation potential. AI is already closing that gap: 79% of Independent Sponsors surveyed expect it to meaningfully reshape the model within three years, particularly in sourcing and diligence, the exact areas XS’s system is built around.
XS is live now, working with its first cohort of Independent Sponsors and investment firms ahead of a broader rollout in the coming months.
PRESS CONTACT
Maeve Couch
[email protected]
(347) 680-3601
About XS Global
XS gives Independent Sponsors and investment firms the value creation capability large funds build in-house: origination from thesis-to-close to add-on activity, live data across every company owned, and the operating professionals to move the numbers. One system, from the first deal through the hold to exit.
For more information, please visit https://xs.global/.
SOURCE XS Global
