Coupa and MIT Data Science Lab Launch Business Spend Report
Coupa, one of the world’s leading platforms for autonomous spend management, has launched the Coupa + MIT Data Science Lab Business Spend Index (BSI) Report, 2026 Edition.
As leaders from across procurement and finance joined Coupa at the first stop of its Inspire World Tour in London, the report, which is built on Coupa’s foundational, community-generated US$10tn dataset of actual business spend, was unveiled. The BSI is an innovative economic indicator that leverages AI and proprietary data to better predict where business spend is heading.
Real-time data over traditional indicators
Through their unique collaboration, Coupa and MIT Data Science Lab sought to measure the true direction and strength of business spending by capturing market-driven dynamics as they happen.
Traditional economic indicators, such as real GDP, are frequently revised, making them difficult to use for decision-making. By capturing the collective data of millions of procurement transactions and turning it into actionable intelligence, the BSI captures macroeconomic shifts in near real-time without re-estimation and generates forward-looking economic forecasts of business spend up to 90 days ahead.
The BSI tracked real capital deployment from within the broader Coupa community network of more than 10 million buyers and suppliers, providing leaders with actionable spend data to navigate current global trade dynamics. In doing so, it successfully detected a major economic turning point in manufacturing three months before the ISM PMI registered it.
Unlike traditional indicators that rely on backwards-looking sentiment surveys, the BSI analyses committed spend transactions drawn from Coupa’s unique, proprietary dataset.
Operating on the principle that action precedes perception, the index bypasses subjective executive opinions to capture genuine market-driven spending dynamics. This ensures the BSI delivers precise, noise-free economic reads based on actual B2B purchasing behaviour rather than how business leaders feel about the market.
Kevin laquinto, Coupa's Chief Marketing Officer, says: "With visibility into trillions of dollars of actual business spend, you don't guess where the economy is going, you see it unfolding in real-time.
"By leveraging Coupa’s unmatched proprietary dataset and combining it with the best macroeconomic indicators and AI, MIT Data Science Lab and Coupa have collaborated to deliver a report that has tremendous business value for procurement, supply chain and other business leaders who are debating and actioning future spend decisions."
David Simchi-Levi, the William Barton Rogers Professor and retired head of the MIT Data Science Lab, adds: ““Coupa has a very unique dataset that offers the basis for incredible economic insights. By applying rigorous econometric modelling and statistical analysis, we have mathematically observed that Coupa's data has strong leading signals relative to numerous established macroeconomic indicators, such as FRED, IDEA, ISM PMI and Real GDP.”
Key BSI findings:
BSI Catches April Spend Pullback Before Surveys: All five tracked sectors registered month-over-month spend declines in April 2026, from −0.8% in Manufacturing to −3.3% in Business Services. In comparison, ISM PMI’s Manufacturing & Services surveys predicted the industry would expand in April.
Sector Contractions Predicted Over the Summer: The BSI is predicting that procurement spend will contract in sectors of High Tech, Financial Services and Healthcare & Life Sciences over the summer. Financial Services is the sector forecasted to see the largest contraction.
Tech's Bet on AI is Yielding Enterprise Demand: High Technology procurement spend has climbed more than 40% since mid-2024 to a four-year cycle high. Tracking enterprise software and services procurement, the BSI provided a definitive early signal that enterprise demand is catching up to the massive AI infrastructure build-out commitments made.
Navigating tariff volatility and resilience
From Tariff Shock to AI Investment: Smaller US manufacturing firms were forced to slash spend by 17.5% to survive 2025 tariff volatility, compared to just 14.6% for larger manufacturing firms. The February 20, 2026 Supreme Court tariff ruling introduced a significant source of policy stabilisation, allowing businesses to shift away from short-term defensive manoeuvres and return to long-term strategic investments in automation and AI-enabled execution systems.
Manufacturing Invests in Resilience Despite Soft Demand: Typically, manufacturing spend only rises to meet surging customer orders. However, the BSI showed that late 2025 manufacturing spend surged even though new customer demand remained soft. Spurred by full expensing provisions in the July 2025 "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBBA), manufacturers are taking advantage of tax breaks to make bold internal investments in automation, capability and supply chain resilience.
Detailed insights from the BSI provide answers to the questions that leaders are asking. Looking ahead, the BSI can inform decision-making with an inference of how tariffs, geopolitics, trade and economic factors will impact supply, pricing and demand.
