Enterprise procurement startup Lio Founder
Enterprise procurement startup Lio announced a $30 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz on Thursday, bringing total funding to $33 million as the company scales its AI agent platform that executes purchasing workflows autonomously rather than simply assisting human buyers.
The New York and Tel Aviv-based company, founded by CEO Vladimir Keil alongside Lukas Heinzmann and Till Wagner in 2023, deploys what it calls "Agent Operating Procedures" that handle procurement end-to-end across enterprise systems, from triaging requests and comparing suppliers to negotiating terms and completing transactions.
"Every previous generation of procurement technology was built on the same assumption, that humans will do the work and technology will help them do it faster," Keil told TechCrunch. "We take a fundamentally different approach. Instead of building software to help humans do procurement work faster, Lio deploys AI agents that execute the workflow themselves."
The funding round included participation from SV Angels, Harry Stebbings, and Y Combinator, where Lio participated in the Spring 2023 batch. The capital will fuel U.S. expansion and development of additional agent capabilities as the company works to transform procurement from a manual back-office function into what Keil describes as "a much more powerful lever for enterprise performance."
The $180 Billion Manual Process
Enterprise procurement remains stubbornly manual despite decades of software innovation. Companies spend over $180 billion annually on procurement talent compared to roughly $10 billion on procurement software, according to Lio's analysis, reflecting how much work still happens around existing systems rather than through them.
Each purchase order typically requires opening ERP software, checking contract management systems, searching supplier databases, running compliance checks, cross-referencing budgets, and digging through email threads. Even with modern eProcurement platforms, the actual decision-making and coordination happens at human speed, forcing companies to scale headcount or outsource work at up to 20 times the cost of software.
Keil experienced this friction firsthand while selling enterprise software at his previous startup, watching deals stall in procurement bottlenecks. He realized the process consisted largely of unstructured data and repetitive workflows—exactly the type of work AI agents should excel at automating.
Agents That Actually Execute
Unlike traditional procurement software that routes requests through systems while humans make decisions, Lio's agents operate across enterprise infrastructure to read documents, evaluate suppliers, negotiate within guardrails, and generate the records needed to finalize transactions. The platform integrates with existing ERP and finance stacks, contract lifecycle management systems, and supplier risk databases.
"Processes that once took weeks can now be completed in minutes," Keil said. One global tier-1 industrial manufacturer automated 75% of previously outsourced procurement work within six months of deployment, freeing the equivalent of 10 full-time employees.
The company already manages billions of dollars in enterprise spend for dozens of Global 2000 and Fortune 500 customers, including Munich Re, Brose, and Novozymes. Early deployments often start with lower-risk, high-volume categories or tail spend to demonstrate quick wins before expanding into more complex sourcing.
Competing with Legacy Giants
Lio positions its agentic execution model against incumbent procurement suites from SAP Ariba and Oracle, along with business process outsourcers and consulting firms that handle tactical buying. The company argues that AI agents executing complete workflows—rather than co-pilots assisting with individual tasks—represents the fundamental competitive shift.
For CFOs and chief procurement officers, the value proposition extends beyond faster transactions. By automating routine execution, procurement teams can redirect effort from processing paperwork to running negotiations, analyzing suppliers, and capturing savings opportunities that manual workflows typically miss.
The Series A arrives as agentic AI reshapes enterprise software economics across categories. Companies building autonomous execution layers are raising significant capital to displace both legacy software vendors and the outsourced labor that still handles much enterprise work manually.
Keil declined to disclose current revenue but said the fresh capital positions Lio to scale rapidly across the U.S. market as enterprises seek productivity gains from AI that go beyond incremental improvements.
