CHICAGO and EDINBURGH—13th August, 2026—Mathew Focht, Managing Partner of EMERGING, and Michael Burt, Managing Partner of Promethean Investments, 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. XPR will invest in artificial intelligence and automation platforms built for hospitality and experiential entertainment.
The fund formalizes a working relationship the two have built over the past six years, investing and
operating side by side across the experience economy. Having tested the partnership deal by deal, Fochtand Burt have now brought the two halves—EMERGING’s origination and operating engine and Promethean’s institutional capital structuring discipline—under a single vehicle.
XPR will invest across the experience economy—the convergence of digital technology, hospitality and physical entertainment venues—with a focus on the intelligence layer: the AI, automation and data infrastructure that sits beneath consumer-facing brands rather than the storefront itself.
AI arrives in the industry that employs one in ten Americans
The restaurant and foodservice industry is the second-largest private-sector employer in the United
States, behind only healthcare, accounting for roughly 15.7 million jobs—about 10 percent of the
domestic workforce, according to the National Restaurant Association. It is also an industry that runs on 35 to 40 percent annual turnover, single-digit margins and a great deal of manual process.
That combination, the partners argue, makes hospitality one of the largest and least-penetrated markets for applied AI anywhere in the economy.
“Hospitality has enormous scale and very little legacy technology to defend, which is a rare
combination,” said Focht. “The winners here won’t be the flashiest consumer app. They’ll be the AI
platforms that quietly take cost, labor friction and guesswork out of every location, every shift, every
day. And we can see which ones actually work, because we see the operating data across roughly a third of the restaurants in the country.”
XPR’s targets include order and beverage automation, computer vision, autonomous service and
delivery, AI-driven media and merchandising inside venues, and labor, demand and supply-chain
intelligence—systems that install once and then operate across thousands of locations.
A distribution advantage most funds can’t buy
XPR’s general partners bring the fund direct access to Buyers Edge Platform, the largest food and
beverage platform in the industry, which works with nearly one in three restaurants in the United
States. John Davie, a general partner in the fund, is Chief Executive Officer of Buyers Edge Platform, and Focht co-founded its largest division.
For an AI investor, that relationship is the difference between a thesis and a proof. Portfolio companies gain a route to market across tens of thousands of operators on day one, and the fund can test against real transaction and operating data whether a product actually removes cost before it commits capital.
A track record that predates the fund
EMERGING’s history in the category runs well ahead of XPR. The firm has invested across social
entertainment concepts including Flight Club US, Poolhouse and Batbox, and across the technology and automation platforms that serve the industry, including TaiV, Botrista, BrewBird and Serve. That dual vantage point—the venues themselves and the intelligent infrastructure running underneath them—is what shaped the fund’s thesis.
A platform, not a consumer bet
XPR’s thesis is that the durable value in experiential entertainment accrues to repeatable, licensable IP and to the platforms that scale it—not to any single venue or format.
“Humans have craved entertainment for as long as there have been humans, and hospitality and
entertainment are two of the oldest industries in the world,” said Burt. “What’s changed is that
technology is now transforming entertainment the way it already transformed music, film and
television. Our job is to take the intellectual property, the technology and the operating discipline, take consumer volatility out of the equation, and build something defensible and repeatable. That’s what gives institutional investors a structured way to access this category.”
“We’ve spent 25 years building concepts and building relationships with landlords and operators,” said
Focht. “Those relationships aren’t a contact list—they’re a live feed. It means we don’t need a crystal
ball about which technology sticks. The market tells us directly, and then we go build and back
accordingly.”
Why now
The partners point to a consolidation window in a young industry. Multiple sub-scale operators are each carrying duplicate corporate overhead, which acts as an anchor on growth at exactly the moment
founders and management teams are looking to reach the next stage.
“You have concepts sitting side by side with largely identical G&A,” said Burt. “Consolidation at that level is entirely natural, the revenue base stays intact, and we’re not paying premium multiples for it. We believe $300 million can be deployed very comfortably across the consolidation opportunity, alongside a set of exceptional growth concepts—and the hard cap gives us room to move if the pipeline supports it.”
The firms also argue the category is counter-cyclical relative to bigger-ticket leisure spend. Across
recessions since 2005, Promethean’s portfolio concepts have grown, and every investment in the
platform increased in value through the COVID-19 period without the loss of a single concept. When
long-haul travel and destination trips come off the table, spending tends to move toward local nights
out—which is precisely where XPR’s concepts and licensed technology sit.
Operating support at scale
Beyond capital, XPR brings portfolio companies an advisory network of 58 CEOs and founders drawn
from leading hospitality, entertainment and technology companies, along with operational support
across supply chain, real estate, capital structure and long-range planning.
“Ten years from now, we want XPR to be the first call,” said Focht. “If you’re building in the experience space and you need a partner who can actually scale you, we want to be the platform you have to be on.”
About EMERGING
EMERGING is an investment and operating platform focused on AI and technology for hospitality,
competitive social entertainment and experiential hospitality. Founded by Mathew Focht, the firm
combines proprietary category origination with hands-on operating experience across venue concepts, restaurant technology and experiential real estate. EMERGING is headquartered in Chicago.
About Promethean Investments
Promethean Investments is an Edinburgh-based private capital firm with more than 20 years of
experience structuring and scaling businesses across consumer, retail and services sectors, including
building a motor retail platform from £50 million to approximately £1 billion in turnover.
