EMERGING and Promethean Launch $300M Experience Fund to Back AI for Hospitality
CHICAGO, Aug. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- EMERGING and Promethean today announced the launch of The Experience Fund (XPR), a $300 million vehicle with a $500 million hard cap, co-sponsored 50/50 by the two firms. Led by EMERGING Managing Partner Mathew Focht and Promethean Managing Partner Michael Burt, XPR will invest in artificial intelligence, IP holdings Companies and automation platforms built for hospitality and experiential entertainment.
The fund formalizes a six-year working relationship, pairing EMERGING's origination and operating engine with Promethean's twenty-year history of institutional private equity investing and capital structuring. XPR targets the intelligence layer of the experience economy—the AI, automation and data infrastructure beneath consumer-facing brands—spanning order and beverage automation, computer vision, autonomous service, and labor and supply-chain intelligence and gaming intellectual property.
The opportunity is scale: the restaurant and foodservice industry is the second-largest private-sector employer in the U.S.—roughly 15.7 million jobs, about 10 percent of the workforce—yet runs on 35 to 40 percent turnover, single-digit margins and heavy manual process.
"Hospitality has enormous scale and very little legacy technology to defend, which is a rare combination," said Focht. "The winners won't be the flashiest consumer app. They'll be the AI platforms that take cost, labor friction and guesswork out of every location—and we can see which ones actually work, because we see the operating data across roughly a third of U.S. restaurants."
That vantage point comes through Buyers Edge Platform, the industry's largest food and beverage platform, which works with nearly one in three U.S. restaurants. Prospective portfolio companies gain a route to market across tens of thousands of operators on day one. John Davie is GP of EMERGING and CEO of Buyers Edge Platform.
"Technology is now transforming entertainment the way it already transformed music, film and television," said Burt. "We're investing in the infrastructure that drives physical entertainment. The businesses that we are investing in are delivering a technology driven experience as well as the B2B infrastructure that helps deliver the best in-person experience for the consumers.
EMERGING's category history includes IP-driven social entertainment concepts F1 Arcade, Flight Club US, Poolhouse and Batbox, alongside technology platforms TaiV, Botrista, BrewBird and Serve.
About EMERGING FUND MANAGEMENT LLC
EMERGING is an investment and operating platform focused on AI and technology for hospitality, competitive social entertainment and experiential hospitality. Founded by Mathew Focht, it is headquartered in Chicago.
About Promethean Investments LLP
Promethean is a U.S. and U.K-based private equity investment firm with more than 20 years of experience structuring, scaling and investing in consumer, retail and services businesses.
This release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security. Any such offer will be made only to qualified investors pursuant to definitive offering documents.
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