Procure AI lands $13M in funding to automate business procurement tasks

The business of sourcing components and supplies and agreeing contractual terms won’t be very exciting, nevertheless it sure is vital, and that’s precisely why Procure AI Ltd.’s seed funding round is worthy of attention.

The startup today said it has raised $13 million in an investment round led by Headline, with participation from C4 Ventures, Futury Capital and plenty of angel investors from the procurement industry.

Procure AI is leveraging artificial intelligence agents to attempt to automate enterprise’s procurement operations, and claims to find a way to deliver measurable cost reductions and increased efficiency, boosting their bottom line. To do that, it has developed a “complete AI-native procurement platform” that covers every aspect of shopping for and selling essential supplies, versus point solutions that only goal isolated workloads.

Quite than replace existing procurement software systems, Procure AI’s platform simply integrates with them, gobbling up all of the info they generate to feed greater than 50 agents. It has developed three sorts of AI agents – autonomous agents for executing procurement-related tasks independently, collaborative agents that assist humans in making decisions, and ambient agents that provide proactive support to human teams. In keeping with the startup, it enables full automation across every procurement task, including sourcing, contracting, purchasing and invoice management.

It says procurement automation is required now greater than ever, because many teams are being asked to do more with increasingly limited resources. It cites research from Proxima Group, which shows that 90% of firms are scuffling with problems akin to limited headcount on their procurement teams, budget constraints and a skills gap. Furthermore, with the imposition of so many tariffs on goods being imported into U.S., firms are also coping with increased uncertainty regarding international trade and disruptions to their usual supply chains.

Despite these challenges, procurement stays critical for many enterprises. Research by Hackett Group indicates that external supplier costs account for between 60% and 75% of the common Fortune 500 company’s revenue, and so even modest gains in efficiency and price reductions can translate to billions of dollars in profit.

That’s what Procure AI says it could actually provide, claiming substantial improvements in productivity, quality and price savings. As an example, its Autonomous Spot-Buy and Tactical Sourcing agents are said to scale back procurement times by around 40%, while delivering savings of between 3.7% and 5.2% on each item that’s sourced, while its Quote-to-Order Intake agent enables as much as 60% of requests to be performed autonomously.

Procure AI co-founder and co-Chief Executive Konstantin von Büren said enterprises can’t afford to depend on manual, people-intensive processes for his or her procurement operations. “Our enterprise clients are telling us they should process thrice the quantity of sourcing events with flat or declining headcount,” he said. “The one way forward is thru AI agents that may operate autonomously whilst maintaining the rigor and compliance that procurement demands.”

The proof is within the pudding, and Procure AI has been growing rapidly over the past 12 months, with its revenue up four-times. The startup has offices in London, Paris and Frankfurt, and customers akin to the German energy supplier EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG and manufacturing giant Kärcher SE & Co. KG say its software has helped them achieve reductions of around 30% in processing time and savings of around 5%, amounting to savings of around €2.35 million ($2.7 million) on average.

One among the corporate’s biggest benefits is that customers don’t must overhaul their existing procurement systems and begin afresh, co-CEO Yves Bauer said. “Our platform sits on top of fragmented data landscapes and makes them intelligible — enriching what’s there fairly than replacing it,” he explained. “That’s why we are able to deliver ROI in months, not years, and why our clients see us as a real partner fairly than one other vendor.”

Procure AI’s next step is to expand beyond its core markets of Germany, Austria and Switzerland into the remainder of Europe, especially the U.K., France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia. It’ll also deal with growing its engineering teams and expanding its agentic automations.

Headline Partner Dominic Wilhelm said existing procurement AI tools are too focused on solving isolated problems, fairly than fixing your complete operation. “Procure AI addresses the fragmented data and manual processes that plague procurement operations, delivering measurable ROI across your complete workflow,” he said.

Image: Procure AI