Top Five Procurement Stories: Boeing, Globality Coupa, IEA
Boeing Commits US$1bn to Kansas Facility & Workforce
Boeing has committed to invest US$1bn over three years in its Wichita Aerospace Facility. The funding will support facility upgrades and workforce training programmes as the company works through a backlog of more than 6,100 aircraft orders.
The investment follows Boeing's acquisition of Kansas based Spirit AeroSystems at the end of 2025. Kelly Ortberg, Chief Executive Officer of Boeing, described the acquisition as "a pivotal moment in Boeing's history".
The Wichita facility employs more than 13,000 workers who manufacture major structures for Boeing's commercial aircraft line. The site produces components that feed into every Boeing commercial aeroplane programme.
Supply chain consolidation strategy
Boeing acquired Spirit AeroSystems in December 2025 in a transaction that brought the Kansas-based supplier's commercial and aftermarket operations under direct Boeing control. The acquisition established a separate entity called Spirit Defense.
Kelly said at the time: "This is a pivotal moment in Boeing's history and future success as we begin to integrate Spirit AeroSystems' commercial and aftermarket operations and establish Spirit Defense.
"As we welcome our new teammates and bring our two companies together, our focus is on maintaining stability so we can continue delivering high-quality aeroplanes, differentiated services and advanced defense capabilities for our customers and the industry."
Is Globality’s AI Redefining the Sourcing Landscape?
For decades, the Request for Proposal (RFP) has been the bane of enterprise procurement. The traditional process of writing rigid specifications, managing disparate vendor emails and manually analysing bids is notoriously slow.
As a result, it often takes six to nine months to cross the finish line, leaving business stakeholders frustrated and procurement teams bogged down in administrative friction.
While traditional software giants have successfully digitised the paperwork behind this process, there still remain underlying challenges.
Globality is taking a radically different approach. Instead of trying to out-feature the massive, entrenched Source-to-Pay (S2P) suites, it is setting its strategy for complex services spend by eliminating the legacy RFP in favour of autonomous, agentic AI.
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.
IEA: Oil Supplies Depleting at Record Pace amid Conflict
The International Energy Agency has issued a stark warning that global oil supplies are depleting at a record pace, with the Strait of Hormuz closure driving the worst supply shock in decades. For procurement professionals managing energy costs and supply chain resilience, the implications could be severe.
When the Strait of Hormuz closed at the end of February, firms did not face immediate disruption, but the breathing room was temporary.
While the closure effectively cut off 20% of the world's fuel supplies, hundreds of tankers from the Middle East were already in transit and were weeks from reaching their destinations around the world.
How Vertice Will Create 'World's 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.
