The Intelligence Gap.

The AI Gap

We wanted flying cars and got 140 characters. Outside of bits, the West has barely moved in fifty years. AI is the first technology in a generation with the leverage to break that trajectory. That break only happens if AI gets deployed in the operating businesses that make up the public market.

It is not getting effectively deployed. 58% of small and mid-cap public companies claim to have adopted AI. <1% describe that adoption as mature. This is the Intelligence Gap, and it is an organizational architecture problem before it is a technology problem.

Companies remain stuck in what we call Pilot Purgatory. They announce pilots and generate headlines, but audited financial statements show almost no movement in labor leverage, gross margin expansion, or SG&A productivity. The gap between management claims and operating reality is the firm-level signature of stagnation. It is where Sargasso Capital Management invests.

The Strategy

We invest in a concentrated number of public companies with durable businesses, substantial moats, and the capacity to compound for many years. We engage as constructivist partners, aligned with management teams to close the intelligence gap and unlock lasting value.

The Framework

This thesis is fully developed in Pilot Purgatory, Sargasso's May 2026 research paper. The paper lays out the forensic diagnostics, case studies, Constructivist Playbook, and forward scenarios that define the firm's investment process. Read it at pilotpurgatory.ai.

The Background

Sargasso was founded by Patrick Feeley, a Yale graduate who has operated at the intersection of capital management, technology deployment, and large-scale organizational change. Patrick served as Chief of Staff to Vivek Ramaswamy across Strive Asset Management, his 2024 presidential campaign, and his family office, helping build Strive into one of the fastest-growing ETF platforms in recent history.

Most recently, at Roivant Sciences, he held roles of increasing responsibility spanning firm-level governance and its AI and health technology ventures, where he observed firsthand how architecture redesign at the operating level produces the kind of compounding returns this thesis describes. These experiences crystallized the pattern now repeating across small and mid-cap public equities, where capable technology collides with legacy systems and produces a persistent structural mispricing that Sargasso exists to close.