Custom AI for private equity and the companies it owns
We build AI that does real work inside your portfolio companies. It plans the routes, answers the HR questions, checks the invoices, and finds the revenue your team is missing. It runs on the systems you already have.
Who we are
The engineers who put AI into production work at the AI labs. A mid-market company won't win that hire. So we bring the team to you.
3 Above
Finds the problem worth solving, scopes it, contracts it and owns the result with you. One relationship, one accountable firm.
Our engineering team
Forward-deployed AI engineers who write the code, connect your systems and stay through go-live. No account managers, no strategy decks.
Your team
Tells us how the job really gets done, and approves anything that matters before it goes out.
The problem
Most portfolio companies have already tried. The pattern is the same everywhere.
People finish their own tasks a little faster. The business runs exactly as it did, and nothing shows up in the P&L.
The data sits across a dozen systems and in people's heads. The cleanup becomes the project, and the project never ships.
The people who know how are at the AI labs, and a portfolio company can't carry that team anyway.
We remove all three. Our engineers build it, we connect to your data as it is, and you see results in weeks.
What you get
Everything your company knows, connected in one place and kept current: the ERP, the CRM, the scheduling tool, email, the spreadsheet under someone's desk. Nobody gathers it and nobody maintains it. It knows who is allowed to see what, and it learns every day.
Each Worker owns one job the business does over and over, and does it on schedule without being asked. A person approves where that matters. Workers don't sleep, take vacation or leave for a competitor.
The Brain answers questions. A Worker does the work.
Already using ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot?
Answer for the tools your company runs today. Your technical lead will know.
Accounting, CRM, scheduling and the rest. If there's no ready-made connector, we build one.
Structured and unstructured data, updated without anyone feeding it. Outdated information gets retired.
No agreeable chatbot filling gaps with guesses.
Runs the job on a schedule and follows company policy, rather than waiting for someone to type a prompt.
One set of access rules covers every question and every Worker, and every action is logged.
Would you trust your current chatbot with your most sensitive HR question about union employee policies?A Worker built this way already answers those questions every day for a multibillion-dollar agriculture company.
Compared with what you've been pitched
| The option | What it gives you | What we do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Chatbots and copilots | One person gets an answer when they ask. It only knows what someone pastes in. | Does the job on its own schedule, connected to your systems, whether anyone asks or not. |
| Consulting firms | A "roadmap," a pilot and an hourly bill that keeps running. | A fixed price quoted before work starts. Working software at the end, not a recommendation. |
| Software platforms | You change how you work to fit the tool, after an implementation and a data cleanup. | Built around how you already work, on your data in whatever state it's in. |
| Hiring your own AI team | A search you'll probably lose, then a payroll most portfolio companies can't carry. | Our engineers do the build, sitting with the people who do the work. |
Running today
Plans every technician's route and sets the daily schedule.
Cost of two people out. Open headcount closed.
Answers HR questions for a 23-person HR team, end to end.
80% fewer hours a week. Consistent enough that nobody reviews the answers.
Runs accounts payable: checks every invoice and catches fraud, with no human in the loop.
Company EBITDA nearly doubled, to an all-time high.
"It runs every day without anyone touching it, saving us the cost of two people. We could remove the open headcount and refocus existing employees on growth."CEO, service and logistics company, Florida
Results as reported by the companies themselves.
On the revenue side
The same Brain that takes cost out can find the sales your team is missing. Examples of revenue Workers we build:
Finds the stores, distributors and accounts that buy some of your products but not the rest, and hands each rep a ranked list of what to pitch where.
Learns each customer's ordering rhythm and flags the account that's late or slowing down, before it quietly goes to a competitor.
Shows which promotions actually grew sales and which just discounted volume you would have sold anyway, so next quarter's spend goes where it works.
Reads campaign results as they come in and recommends shifting budget toward what's converting while the campaign is still running.
Tracks competitor pricing, promotions and new items across retailers and online, and flags where you're leaving margin or losing share.
Surfaces what customers search for and ask about that you don't carry yet: new items, sizes and channels, sized by the demand behind them.
How it works
At no cost, we study the business from outside and inside and come back with a ranked list of opportunities, each sized and marked cost out or revenue in.
A prioritized plan with timeframes and a fixed price for each piece. You decide what goes first.
Engineers connect the Brain to your systems with read access only to start, and build the first Workers alongside your team.
Workers run on schedule and the Brain keeps learning. New Workers get added as you ask for them, often within days.
Your data, your Brain
Your data and your Brain's memory belong to you. Export a complete copy in an open format at any time.
Each company gets its own. Nothing is shared with any other client, and your data never trains anyone else's model.
We connect at the source. No copies, no migration, and it works from what was true this morning.
Every question and every Worker goes through your access rules. Every action is logged.
We work across AI providers and test new models against your Brain before they go live.
You decide which steps need a human sign-off. Everything else just gets done.
Common questions
Those tools help one person at a time, when that person asks. They don't stay connected to your systems, they don't remember your business, and they don't do the job on their own. A Worker does. Run the five-point check above with your technical lead and the difference usually becomes clear on its own.
No. We connect to your systems as they are, in whatever state they're in. Cleanup, where it helps, happens later and in the background, not as a project that comes first.
The first Worker is typically live in two to four weeks. One client's scheduling Worker went live in under 30 days.
The Scan is free. After that, a fixed price per piece of work, quoted before anything starts. No hourly billing, and if the build takes longer than planned, that's on us.
Access to the systems involved, and time with the people who do the job today. That's where the real process lives. We don't need your IT team to run a project.
It takes repetitive work off their desks. Clients have used it to close open headcount and avoid backfills, and to move existing people onto growth work.
The next step
A live demo, not a slide deck. Bring anyone you'd want in the room. If ten trained employees arrived tomorrow at near zero cost, what would you have them do? Come with that answer.
Ro Assal, Founder, 3 Above