Pilot Wave
Pilot Wave is a podcast at the intersection of artificial intelligence and private markets, exploring how production-grade AI is transforming industrial businesses from the inside out.
Pilot Wave Holdings is a private equity firm purpose-built for AI rollups. The firm leads majority buyouts of manufacturing, infrastructure, and essential services businesses and transforms them with production-grade AI. The strategy has delivered market-leading realized returns and venture-backed AI spinouts incubated directly from portfolio operations.
Founded by Afsheen Afshar, MD, PhD (Stanford), former Chief AI Officer at Cerberus Capital Management and Chief Data Science Officer at JPMorgan, Pilot Wave brings institutional-grade AI expertise to Main Street businesses.
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Episodes
Thursday May 21, 2026
Thursday May 21, 2026
Most AI investing stories are theoretical. This one has receipts. In this episode, Afsheen Afshar sits down with John MacKinnon, President of Connect Atlantic Utility Services (CAUS), a Nova Scotia-based high voltage transmission and distribution contractor that grew into one of Atlantic Canada's most sought-after infrastructure businesses under Pilot Wave ownership. Together they walk through the entire arc of a majority buyout that produced a cash-flowing infrastructure business, an AI spinout built for less than one percent of revenue, and ultimately a realized return.
John doesn't sugarcoat it. He was skeptical at the start, the ERP rollout nearly confirmed every doubt, and the decision to build Detect from scratch after every platform on the market came up short felt like a serious gamble. What changed his mind wasn't the pitch. It was watching the flywheel actually spin: Connect's cash flow funding the technology, the technology compounding the value of the business, and the data eventually making the exit decision obvious.
If you're an investor trying to understand what the AI rollup model looks like when it actually works, or an operator wondering whether any of this translates to the real world, this is the episode to hear.
What We Got Into:
Closing a majority buyout during COVID with a seller Afsheen had never met in person
Why a battle-scarred operator with plenty of scar tissue was skeptical from day one
The ERP rollout that went sideways and nearly proved every doubt right
Running dozens of ideas through the "9 out of 10 are dumb" filter before zeroing in on asset inspection
Why every drone and inspection platform on the market failed and the decision to build from scratch
How Detect evolved from a drone company into a data and algorithms platform with a dataset that didn't exist anywhere in the world
The flywheel: how Connect's cash flow funded Detect's development for less than 1% of annual revenue
The live demo that changed everything: flying over a customer's own assets in real time from a boardroom 500 miles away
A buy-and-hold-forever firm that sold when the data said to and why that was the right call
Resources Mentioned:
Detect: https://detectinspections.com/
Connect with Connect Atlantic Utility Services:Website: https://centuri.com/connect-utility-services/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-mackinnon-a3267b13
Connect with Pilot Wave:Website: https://www.pilotwaveholdings.com
X: https://x.com/pilotwaveai
Host/s:
Afsheen Afshar
https://x.com/snaff
https://www.linkedin.com/in/afsheen-afshar-9a924b
Tuesday May 12, 2026
Tuesday May 12, 2026
Welcome to PilotWave -- the podcast at the intersection of AI and the real economy. We talk to the researchers, builders, acquirers, and investors pushing this industry forward. In this pilot episode, we turn the mic inward. Founder and Managing Partner Afsheen Afshar, Senior Partner Arik Oganesian, and Director Calvin Cooper introduce the firm and the thesis behind it.
Seven years in, PilotWave has learned that buying industrial businesses and transforming them with AI demands something most firms can't fake -- a rare hybrid of private equity discipline, venture-style risk tolerance, deep technical expertise, and enough EQ to work with sellers who've never thought about an AI strategy. The three dig into the origin story, the hard lessons, and what the OpenClaw moment reveals about where autonomous AI is actually headed.
What We Got Into:
The origin of the firm and why the AI rollup model was considered a dumb idea until it wasn't
Why "AI rollup" is a misnomer -- and what PilotWave actually does
The hybrid capability stack that makes or breaks this model
EQ as an operational edge when working with traditional business owners
OpenClaw and what fully autonomous AI exposes about risk, liability, and human intuition
Why human instinct degrades when AI does everything -- and why that matters for portcos
The ownership model as the only structure that gives you real leverage
The North Star principle and how it clarifies every tough decision
Connect with PilotWave:Website: https://www.pilotwaveholdings.com
X: https://x.com/pilotwaveai
Hosts:
Afsheen Afshar
https://x.com/snaff
https://www.linkedin.com/in/afsheen-afshar-9a924b
Arik Oganesian
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arik-oganesian
Calvin Cooper
https://x.com/cooper_nyc_
https://www.linkedin.com/in/coopernyc