Lio Raises $30m From Andreessen Horowitz And Others To Automate Enterprise Procurement

Lio’s co-founders cognize firsthand that procurement — nan process enterprises usage to acquisition services from vendors — is often a bottleneck. Vladimir Keil, nan company’s co-founder and CEO, had knowledgeable this problem arsenic an worker wrong a ample institution and past again while building his first startup.

“When we were trading endeavor software, we had to spell done procurement ourselves and saw really manual and fragmented nan process still is,” he told TechCrunch. Kiel and his squad person built an automated level of AI agents — package that tin complete tasks connected behalf of humans — to thief hole immoderate of those fragmented processes.

On Thursday, Lio announced a $30 cardinal Series A successful a information led by Andreessen Horowitz. SV Angels, Harry Stebbings, and YC besides partook successful nan information (Lio was portion of nan Spring’23 batch). The institution has raised $33 cardinal successful backing to date. Keil said nan caller superior will beryllium utilized to grow nan institution passim nan U.S. and summation nan capabilities of Lio’s AI agents, which purpose to complete nan full procurement process for endeavor customers. 

Procurement is astatine nan bosom of endeavor spending, wherever companies look to bargain everything from earthy materials to master services. Each acquisition bid requires attraction and commitment: One usually has to unfastened immoderate type of Enterprise Resource Planning, aliases ERP, software, cheque statement guidance systems, hunt nan supplier database, tally compliance checks, cross-reference budgets, excavation done emails, and truthful on. 

“Even pinch modern eProcurement software, astir of nan existent activity is still done manually,” Keil told TechCrunch. Companies are near to build ample soul teams aliases outsource this work, resulting successful a slow, costly process. Keil had an thought — if nan procurement process is mostly unstructured information and repetitive workflows, past surely this is nan type of task an AI supplier is well-equipped to handle. 

He teamed up pinch friends Lukas Heinzman and Till Wagner and successful 2023, nan trio launched Lio, a virtual procurement workforce. Lio operates an AI-native level pinch agentic infrastructure that completes nan full procurement process 

“Every erstwhile procreation of procurement exertion was built connected nan aforesaid assumption, that humans will do nan activity and exertion will thief them do it faster,” Keil said. “We return a fundamentally different approach. Instead of building package to thief humans do procurement activity faster, Lio deploys AI agents that execute nan workflow themselves.” 

These Lio agents run crossed and connected apical of endeavor systems to publication documents, measure suppliers, discuss terms, and complete transactions. “Processes that erstwhile took weeks tin now beryllium completed successful minutes,” Keil said, adding that nan startup is already helping companies negociate billions successful endeavor spend. “In 1 case, a world shaper was capable to automate 75% of its antecedently outsourced procurement operations wrong six months.” 

Lio is among nan galore companies that person popped up to completely redefine endeavor software, aided by agentic AI’s expertise to fundamentally shift really endeavor exertion package operates. 

Keil considers Lio’s competitors to beryllium bequest procurement package vendors (such arsenic SAP Ariba and Oracle), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) providers, and consulting firms that thief companies pinch these operations.

“Instead of spending astir of their clip processing requests and paperwork, teams tin tally much negotiations, analyse much suppliers, and seizure savings opportunities that would different beryllium missed,” Keil said. “In nan agelong run, we deliberation this changes procurement from a back-office usability into a overmuch much powerful lever for endeavor performance.”