The question usually doesn't come up in the first conversation. It arises the moment a figure lands on the table: a saving, freed-up capacity, a lower staffing cost because of work AI has taken over. You've built that assumption into the figures, the buyer reads them, and then he throws the question back. Not out of unwillingness. Out of a different exposure: he has to run the company without you, and he weighs whether the saving still holds without the assumptions you attached to it.
That's the difference from last year. Then, a saving was a line in the profit-and-loss statement. Now it's a claim about which work has been structurally taken over, by whom, and whether that demonstrably keeps running once the owner leaves. A buyer isn't buying the number of people you still need, he's buying what keeps running without you and without those people. If your AI saving can't withstand that test, it pushes the price down instead of supporting it.
AI already takes over work today, not entirely and not everywhere at the same pace. There are three layers running through almost every process: tasks AI can handle independently, tasks where AI proposes and a human approves or rejects with reason, and tasks that remain human work. In one company the first layer is already embedded in the standard workflow, with a history of results that can be checked. In another company it's a pilot lasting a few months, carried by one enthusiastic employee or one supplier.
That difference determines whether a buyer accepts your figure. A saving that's built into the process — repeatable, documented, independent of who walks in on Monday — weighs differently than a saving that hangs on one subscription, one consultant, or one key person. That affects not only earnings quality; it especially affects owner dependency, because a buyer wonders whether the saving travels with you or remains without you.
You can establish which work is actually being done by AI today, with oversight or without, and which work still lies entirely with people. You can establish how long that has been the case, who set it up, and whether it's anchored in a process or in someone's head. You can establish whether the saving can be traced back to a task, a system and a checkpoint, or whether it can only be traced back to a feeling that things are running more efficiently.
That's a factual inventory, not a prediction about what AI will be able to do next year. And it's that inventory a buyer looks for before accepting your figure: not whether AI takes over work, but whether that's demonstrable and repeatable without you.
You cannot establish whether this specific buyer will accept your assumption. That depends on his own risk perception, his experience with comparable companies, and whether he has ever had the work independently verified himself. You also cannot establish whether the staff currently doing the remaining work will be retained after the acquisition or not — that's a decision for the new owner, with its own legal requirements around employment law and employee representation, and that falls outside what a value scan answers.
What a value scan does do: show where the vulnerability in your figure lies, so you can substantiate it before the buyer asks the question, instead of having to react to it.
When a buyer doubts your AI figure, he's actually doubting the origin of the figure. Which tasks exactly, how were they measured, and does the result hold up when circumstances change. That underlying question — which work in this company can genuinely be taken over by AI — is answered by FTE TO AI's work scan per task, with evidence instead of an estimate.
How that figure weighs into the total price depends on more than AI alone: it plays into how the value of your company is determined, it touches the question why a buyer looks at the management team, and it resurfaces at the moment a buyer is already at the table and the work AI has taken over comes up for discussion. Those earlier in the process will find a connection to what there is to do about that work two years before the sale, and to the moment a year afterward when the assumptions are tested.
You can establish now whether your AI figure rests on a process or on an assumption, before a buyer asks that question for you. The free value check helps with this through eight short questions, one per value driver, resulting in a picture of which driver is weighing most heavily on your price today. The full value scan, with a maturity score per driver, the owner dependency index and a two-year calendar toward the exit moment, is under construction.