Hg Empowers Portfolio Companies with Replit to Save Thousands of Hours Each Year

Getting started & the challenge

Hg is a leading investor in European and transatlantic software and services businesses. As a specialist investor in technology, Hg has built out ‘in house’ teams to support value creation across its portfolio of 50+ software and technology services businesses.

The AI team supports Hg portfolio in harnessing the potential of data and AI. The team provides experts, proprietary operational IP, and project execution support to drive impact across the most critical business levers.

As part of this, the team recognized an early opportunity to accelerate digital transformation across their portfolio companies in software engineering. AI can transform traditional software development, removing potential barriers that hinder innovation, by:

• Enhancing technical resources — Enabling portfolio companies to augment engineering talent and handle lengthy development cycles;
• Democratizing technical-business — Helping non-technical teams to contribute directly to digital solutions, bringing domain expertise to their technical colleagues;
• Scaling success — Successful innovations at one portfolio can now be more easily replicated across others;
• Reducing development costs — Traditional development approaches previously required significant investment before proving value.

Hg was therefore keen to implement AI to democratize software development across their entire portfolio, enabling rapid innovation without the traditional barriers of technical complexity.

Choosing Replit

From initial discussions and use cases, Hg expanded Replit's potential during their Digital Summit in Madrid, where they organized a hackathon for 150 of their technology and product leaders:

• Immediate impact — Participants built working applications in just one hour during the hackathon
• Accessibility for all — Both technical and non-technical leaders could create functional tools

Real-world applications — One participant built a document analyzer for legal contracts in just 45 minutes

Building with Replit

During the Hg Digital Summit hackathon, portfolio company leaders experienced firsthand how Replit transforms software, creating:

• A document analyzer tool — Uploads PDFs and checks for specific legal criteria in contracts
• Internal productivity tools — Teams created applications that save 5+ hours per week per user
• Cross-functional collaboration — Technical and non-technical leaders worked together to build solutions
• Rapid prototyping — Ideas transformed into working applications within the hackathon session

The hackathon format was just one example of more than 30 hackathons that Hg has enabled across their portfolio of b2b SaaS businesses. As one example, Litera, an Hg portfolio company and a global leader in legal technology solutions, has seen dramatic results.

Value realized

The implementation of Replit across Hg’s portfolio is creating compound value:

• Time savings multiply — Tools built in 45 minutes save teams 48+ hours per week when deployed
• Reduced development costs — Internal tools that previously required significant investment can be built in hours
• Accelerated digital transformation — Portfolio companies can now respond to market needs in days, not months

The Hg AI team continue to drive accelerated product innovation through deploying Replit across their portfolio, including:

• Continuing to run hackathons for Product and Engineering leaders
• Enabling companies like Litera to leverage Replit for rapid prototyping
• Creating a new model for portfolio-wide software development
• Building a competitive advantage through rapid innovation capabilities
• Accelerating their own AI and agentic product builds to transform their SaaS portfolio into vertical AI leaders

The success demonstrates how private equity firms can multiply the impact of transformative technologies across their entire portfolio, creating value that compounds as innovations spread from company to company.

About Hg

Hg is a leading investor in European and transatlantic software and services businesses.

We help to build sector-leading enterprises that supply critical software applications or workflow services to deliver intelligent automation for their customers.

We take an active approach to value creation, combining deep end-market knowledge with world class operational resources to provide compelling support to entrepreneurial leaders looking to scale enduring businesses.

With a vast European network and strong presence across North America, Hg has more than $85 billion in assets under management and more than 400 employees. Our portfolio spans more than 50 companies worth over $160 billion in aggregate enterprise value, employing more than 125,000 people and consistently growing revenues at more than 20% annually.