EMERGING and Promethean Investments launched The Experience Fund (XPR) on August 14, 2026, a $300 million vehicle with a $500 million hard cap that will invest in artificial intelligence, IP holdings companies, and automation platforms built for hospitality and experiential entertainment.
The fund is co-sponsored 50/50 by the two firms and led by EMERGING Managing Partner Mathew Focht and Promethean Managing Partner Michael Burt, according to the announcement. XPR targets what the firms call 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, labor and supply-chain intelligence, and gaming intellectual property.
The launch formalizes a six-year working relationship between the two firms, pairing EMERGING’s origination and operating engine with Promethean’s twenty-year history of institutional private equity investing and capital structuring. EMERGING, founded by Focht and headquartered in Chicago, is an investment and operating platform focused on AI and technology for hospitality and competitive social entertainment; Promethean is a U.S.- and U.K.-based private equity firm with more than 20 years in consumer, retail, and services businesses.
What the Fund Is Built On
XPR’s stated edge is distribution before diligence. EMERGING GP John Davie is CEO of Buyers Edge Platform, which the release describes as the industry’s largest food and beverage platform, working with nearly one in three U.S. restaurants. Prospective portfolio companies gain a route to market across tens of thousands of operators from day one. The fund’s own site puts the network at 324,000-plus operator locations and describes a formal agreement under which Buyers Edge sells portfolio technology with dedicated resources inside the platform.
“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.”
The market case rests on that scale. The restaurant and foodservice industry is the second-largest private-sector employer in the U.S., with roughly 15.7 million jobs, about 10 percent of the workforce, while running on 35 to 40 percent turnover, single-digit margins, and heavy manual process. It is exactly the kind of fragmentation that has complicated restaurant AI adoption, where operators juggle disconnected point systems and thin tech budgets.
Portfolio Assets and Structure
The fund arrives with anchor assets already inside. XPR’s site names State of Play and TAiV as its first-close investments. State of Play, an experiential hospitality venue operator, carries an identified investment value of roughly $35 million against approximately $72 million in trailing-twelve-month revenue and $17 million in venue EBITDA, with 25 percent EBITDA margins at mature venues; the fund’s site lists its New York Flatiron location as opening in June 2026. TAiV, a venue-media and hospitality technology layer, runs across 4,053 live locations at a 77 percent gross profit margin, is EBITDA positive, and holds a $5 million pre-negotiated option at EMERGING Fund I terms with a Series B planned for the second half of 2026.
Options built into EMERGING Fund I deals transfer to the Experience Fund, giving the vehicle day-one exposure to earlier portfolio winners at favorable pricing. 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. The site lists named markups in Fund I, including Botrista at 1.7 times cost on a $480 million post-money valuation with more than $40 million in ARR, and F1 Arcade at 3.2 times.
The investment strategy runs in three tiers: access checks of $1 million to $5 million for 5 to 15 percent stakes at Series A, core growth checks of $10 million to $25 million at Series A and B, and follow-on or consolidation positions of $25 million to $75 million at Series B and beyond, with ownership of 15 percent up to control. Named pipeline companies include GETT, BigHoops, and Mirra at the access tier, and BatBox and State of Play at the consolidation tier.
Terms and Track Record
XPR’s published terms set a $500 million vehicle cap, a $10 million-plus GP commitment, a four-year investment period, a 2 percent management fee, an 8 percent preferred return compounded annually, and 20 percent carried interest above the preferred, with a European whole-fund waterfall and a ten-year term plus two one-year extensions. No single position may exceed 15 percent of the fund at cost. The firms target a 3.5-times net multiple on invested capital and a net IRR above 25 percent. Promethean’s track record, per the site, includes a first consumer fund that returned a 41 percent gross IRR and a second fund that has returned more than 120 percent of invested capital, plus roughly $270 million deployed into experiential concepts since 2018.
“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 release notes the fund is offered only to qualified investors under definitive offering documents. The capital lands in a sector where AI deployment has so far concentrated in pieces of the stack, from edge-based vision systems in physical retail to voice ordering, rather than in a dedicated growth vehicle owning the category.
