Startups & Funding
Lio raises $30M to automate enterprise procurement
Lio raised $30 million in Series A funding to expand its AI-native platform, which uses autonomous agents to handle end-to-end enterprise procurement processes.
On Thursday, Lio announced a $30 million Series A—an early-stage funding round—led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round also included participation from SV Angels, Harry Stebbings, and YC. This latest transaction brings the company’s total funding to date to $33 million. Co-founder and CEO Vladimir Keil stated that the company will use the fresh capital to expand throughout the U.S. and increase the capabilities of its AI agents.
Lio was founded to address the manual and fragmented nature of enterprise procurement, which is the process enterprises use to purchase services from vendors. Traditionally, this workflow relies heavily on human labor to navigate legacy software systems like SAP Ariba and Oracle. Keil noted that even with modern eProcurement software, most of the actual work is still done manually. He explained that previous generations of procurement technology were built on the assumption that humans would do the work and technology would simply help them do it faster.
Launched in 2023 by Keil, Lukas Heinzmann, and Till Wagner, Lio takes a different approach by deploying AI agents—software that can complete tasks on behalf of humans—to execute the workflows themselves. The company’s AI-native platform features agentic infrastructure designed to complete the entire procurement process. These agents operate across and on top of enterprise systems, including ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software, to read documents, evaluate suppliers, negotiate terms, and complete transactions. According to Keil, this approach can complete processes in minutes that once took weeks. He asserted that within six months, a global manufacturer was able to automate 75% of its previously outsourced procurement operations using the platform.
By automating these repetitive tasks, Lio aims to free up internal teams. Keil stated that instead of spending most of their time processing requests and paperwork, teams can run more negotiations, analyze more suppliers, and capture savings opportunities that would otherwise be missed. In the long run, the co-founders believe this shift changes procurement from a back-office function into a much more powerful lever for enterprise performance.
Why it matters
Lio is using this capital to scale its U.S. operations and enhance its AI agents, which aim to fully automate the procurement workflow for enterprise clients. By shifting from human-enabling software to autonomous execution, the startup seeks to redefine how large organizations manage their vendor purchasing and back-office operations.