How Vertice Will Create 'World Largest' Procurement Dataset
AI procurement platform Vertice has announced its acquisition of US software company Vendr. The deal creates the 'world's largest procurement intelligence dataset', as Vertice will integrate Vendr's software insights with its own.
The combined data represents over US$75bn in global indirect spend across 32,000 vendors, including real-world pricing and human-to-human interactions from 250,000 negotiated contracts, ranging from software to services.
In a press release issued by Vertice, the company says that customers including ARM, Brex, Duolingo, Twilio and Santander will be able to access the data directly within the Vertice platform.
Vertice’s acquisition of Vendr
Vertice says that by acquiring Vendr and combining its technology, data and team with its own it will help the company accelerate.
Roy Tuvey, Founder and CEO of Vertice, says: "Vertice and Vendr have shared a vision for AI in procurement: to build purpose-designed AI agents trained on real-world data and tailored to specific procurement use cases.
“By bringing these teams together, we can accelerate everything, from the breadth of agents we can build, to the commercial impact we deliver for customers. We are setting a new benchmark for what procurement teams should expect from AI procurement platforms.
"Our combined software pricing data and vendor intelligence has over two million price points and surpasses that of our nearest competitors by an order of magnitude. With deeper insight into vendor pricing, commercial terms, sales tactics and risk, our customers will consistently achieve stronger procurement outcomes.”
What Vendr will contribute to Vertice
Vendr describes itself as a leading authority on software pricing and negotiation intelligence. The company says that it is built on billions of dollars in verified SaaS spend and provides procurement and finance teams with trusted benchmarks and market insights.
Ryan Neu, CEO of Vendr, adds: "Vendr was founded on a simple observation: buyers were making million-dollar purchasing decisions with only a fraction of the information available to the vendor across the table. We spent years closing that gap, building the data, tooling and negotiation expertise to rebalance that dynamic.
"Joining Vertice means that intelligence is now significantly richer, by far the most comprehensive available, and embedded directly within the platform where procurement decisions are made. I'm proud of what we built independently and even more excited about what our two organisations can build together."
How it will impact Vertice’s AI
Vertice and Vendr together operate more than 60 procurement AI agents, all used regularly by over 1,000 customers worldwide.
These agents support customers across key procurement workflows, including intelligent intake, pricing optimisation, workflow efficiency and third-party risk assessment.
Ana is Vertice's autonomous negotiation agent which has been trained on hundreds of thousands of real-world negotiations. Using the agent, procurement buyers can use Ana to negotiate on their behalf.
The integration with the combined procurement intelligence dataset is set to make the model more powerful.
Discussing the acquisition of Vendr and its impact on Vertice's AI, Roy says: "Training our AI, including 'Ana', our autonomous negotiation agent on this same rich, procurement-specific dataset makes it even more powerful.
“Our agents work around the clock helping customers reduce manual effort while delivering best-in-class savings."
Analysis from McKinsey suggests that the integration of AI agents in procurement will accelerate the transition to a hybrid workforce between professionals and digital co-workers, which could result in the procurement function being 25% to 40% more efficient.
