Everything from the Opening Keynote at Zip Forward

In sunny San Francisco, Zip Forward, the flagship conference for the AI procurement platform, Zip, hosted its third annual conference, bringing together over 700 procurement leaders to the YBCA in the city centre.

This year's theme is Agents of Change, which is centred on bringing together procurement and finance leaders reshaping how businesses spend, operate and grow through AI, orchestration and bold execution.

The opening keynote, which was titled as the theme, saw leaders from across Zip take to the stage to tell audience members how Zip can help to power procurement to be this agent of change.

AI Agents: From experimental to essential in procurement

First up was Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder & CEO at Zip. He underscored how AI has moved from experimental to essential in procurement workflows. Zip's leadership argues that procurement is uniquely suited for AI agents, given its structured, repetitive tasks that often prevent teams from focusing on strategic work.

"Procurement is the perfect place to apply AI agents. It's full of structured, repetitive tasks that keep us from doing the strategic work we actually want to do," he said.

Using an analogy to Waymo's self-driving cars, Rujul compared today's AI agents to early autonomous vehicles – capable of handling straightforward scenarios, not yet complex "level five" autonomy. But Zip was helping procurement to get there, highlighting both its existing 50 pre-configured, procurement-specific AI agents designed to automate real tasks effectively – whilst giving a nod to what is to come next.

The CEO highlighted the work of early adopters like OpenAI, Cribl and Canva, already reporting measurable ROI:

• OpenAI's intake validation agent saves 1,400 hours of manual work annually.
• Cribl's price negotiation agent saves 15% in cost and 3 hours per request.
• Canva's invoice processing agent delivers 2.5× team productivity.

Rujul also pointed to Zip's vision to evolve from AI-assisted tasks to "agentic procurement orchestration", whereby by 2030, 90% of Zip's projected 1 billion annual reviews are supported by AI – compared to 96% being fully manual today. The goal: make AI serve every stakeholder, starting with the requester.

Reimagining intake: AI-powered procurement at the front door

Next on stage was Lu Cheng, Co-Founder and CTO. He explained that Zip was founded to solve a single, frustrating challenge: buying software, services or anything at work had become unnecessarily complex.

Five years ago, Zip introduced the "intake" category, giving requesters a single front door to navigate procurement. This innovation established the foundation for control, compliance, visibility and consistency across the entire process.

Now, with AI reshaping expectations, Zip is reimagining intake once again. According to Zip's State of Spend Report, procurement leaders' top priorities include minimising friction, connecting processes across functions and automating workflows with AI.

"The rise of AI has raised the stakes again – procurement processes must evolve to keep pace with the business and its end users," Lu said.

"Leaders expect processes that minimise friction, are connected across functions and are automated with AI."

To meet those expectations, Zip unveiled its new AI-powered intake experience, which transforms the requester journey in three major ways:

• Smart routing: AI directs each requester to the correct purchasing path, removing confusion.
• Automated pre-fill: AI extracts key data from documents and text, speeding up intake.
• Conversational support: AI answers requester questions instantly throughout the process.

The result: a seamless, conversational and frictionless intake experience that empowers users whilst giving businesses full control behind the scenes.

Freeing up procurement teams to focus on strategic work

Next up was Phil Pappone, Director, Solutions Engineering at Zip, who showcased how Zip's new AI-powered intake system simplifies and guides users through the entire purchasing journey – from simple catalogue buys to complex software requests – without requiring procurement to intervene manually.

When a user needs something straightforward (like a laptop stand), AI recognises it as a catalogue purchase, automatically surfaces relevant items and walks the requester through adding them to the cart and checking out – all inside Zip.

For more complex needs (such as buying an analytics suite), AI asks clarifying questions to determine whether the user wants a new tool or additional licences. It then routes them to the right buying path – for example, suggesting preferred vendors based on company policy.

AI translates requester inputs into structured procurement data – like cost centres, categories, vendors and descriptions – removing common errors and misrouted requests. It also proactively provides answers and policy guidance when users are unsure, replacing "I don't know" with context-driven help.

The result is a conversational, intelligent procurement experience that not only helps users buy the right way but also frees procurement teams to focus on strategic work – empowering everyone to become agents of change.

OpenAI and Zip: Scaling Procurement at Unprecedented Speed

Ann Fleishell, VP of Procurement at OpenAI, was on stage to explore the mutually beneficial partnership between OpenAI and Zip, emphasising how AI agents are essential to keeping pace with the company's unprecedented growth.

The partnership also proved instrumental in OpenAI's record-fast Oracle implementation, completed in just three months, thanks to intense collaboration between teams.

"Having a partner that does the heavy lifting around making procurement simpler and easier lets us focus on the actual work that we're doing," Ann said.

Looking ahead, Ann stressed that AI agents are no longer optional. As the world becomes faster and more complex, procurement teams must rely on AI to process the growing volume of risks, requirements and decisions: "Every decision, every transaction, carries hundreds of risk considerations. To move at speed and gain trust, we have to leverage AI."

Transforming accounts payable: From reactive to proactive

Tracy Gao, Head of Product Marketing at Zip, was joined on stage by Brian Batz, Director, P2P Strategy, to discuss how AI is transforming accounts payable (AP) from reactive to proactive. Zip unveiled three major innovations that automate accuracy, compliance and fraud prevention.

First, AI Payment Risk Insights acts as a safety layer, scanning payments for red flags such as suspicious bank details or vendor domain mismatches – alerting AP teams before money leaves the door.

Second, Agentic Invoice Coding uses contextual reasoning to automatically code complex, multi-line invoices the way a human would – eliminating tedious manual entry and reducing errors.

Finally, the Invoice-to-Contract Compliance Agent cross-checks invoices against contracts to flag rate mismatches, missed discounts or outdated pricing, even drafting vendor communications for resolution.

Together, these tools create touchless invoice processing and real-time protection against fraud and compliance issues, empowering finance teams to focus on strategy rather than paperwork.

Zip: AI-powered transformation

Zip is driving AI-powered change for every team and every stage of the procurement process, for requesters empowered by AI-driven intake to procurement teams orchestrating POs and beyond – leveraging for every stakeholder connected through orchestration.

"AI is introducing a new way of working, but the real agents of change aren't the tools we use, it's you all," Lu said in his closing remarks.

"It's the leaders in this room who will reimagine how work gets done in your organisations. Thank you all for joining us and thank you for being the agents of change, shaping and building the future procurement with us."