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Zip, the AI platform for procurement, has announced a powerful new suite of AI agents at its third annual Zip Forward conference in San Francisco. Headlining the launch is the Price Negotiation Agent, which is designed to help organizations identify instances of overpayment and secure better deals across every category of spend, including IT, software, professional services, and advertising. The launch event brought together over 700 procurement and finance leaders from major companies, including T-Mobile, Gap, and Block, to share insights on the successful implementation of AI in enterprise operations.
Zip launched a new suite of AI agents at its annual Zip Forward conference, focusing on procurement efficiency.
The flagship product is the Price Negotiation Agent, designed to eliminate overpayments and secure better supplier deals.
The agent uses both internal purchase history and external market benchmarks to provide data-backed negotiation guidance.
High-growth customer Cribl projects massive cost savings, including up to $3 million in annual reductions through negotiation and automation.
Zip also introduced a Preferred Vendor Agent and new finance agents for automating accounts payable tasks.
The platform now features new conversational AI capabilities to simplify the entire procurement process from intake to payment.
The challenge of supplier-side pricing asymmetry is a long-standing problem in enterprise purchasing. Suppliers often have full visibility into what different companies pay for the same products, while buyers lack the market benchmarks needed for effective negotiation, leading to significant overpayments.
Zip's Price Negotiation Agent is built to solve this issue by introducing data-backed leverage into every contract discussion. For instance, when a procurement team needs to renew a software license, the agent instantly analyzes historical payments, benchmarks the cost against third-party market intelligence, and then provides specific, actionable negotiation tactics.
The economic impact of this capability is substantial. Cribl, a high-growth data observability platform, projects considerable returns by integrating this technology. By combining faster cycle times, smarter negotiations, and the introduction of a self-negotiating model for non-strategic contracts, the company projects 10-15% in total savings and nearly $3 million in annual cost reductions.
Meteb Alfayez, Director of Procurement and Sourcing at Cribl, noted the shift in focus:
“Zip’s Price Negotiation Agent is allowing our team to focus on strategic priorities while laying the groundwork for a truly autonomous procurement process. We’re seeing meaningful efficiency gains – not only in negotiated outcomes, but in how quickly we can move and how much manual work we can automate.”
Lu Cheng, cofounder and CTO of Zip, highlighted the agent’s unique value:
“We’re incredibly grateful to be working with procurement and finance leaders at the world’s most innovative organizations to transform decades-old procurement challenges into AI solutions that solve real problems. The Price Negotiation Agent addresses a gap that has cost companies millions: the lack of market intelligence needed to negotiate confidently. When a single AI agent can deliver this kind of economic impact, that’s AI delivering real value.”
Beyond the high-impact price negotiation tool, Zip unveiled several additional agents designed to optimize the full procurement journey. This expansion includes a Preferred Vendor Agent that automatically surfaces approved suppliers during the initial intake process. Furthermore, a new suite of finance agents automates complex accounts payable tasks, such as checking invoice compliance against corresponding contracts.
The company has also integrated conversational AI capabilities across its entire platform, from the initial request intake to the final payment. This upgrade eliminates the need for employees to navigate complex, lengthy forms. Instead, employees can now manage every step of the procurement process using plain language. Zip’s AI handles the heavy lifting by asking intelligent clarifying questions, accurately reading uploaded documents, automatically completing necessary requests, and providing instant policy answers.
The move toward agentic AI in the industry was highlighted by Dr. Elouise Epstein, Procurement Futurist at Kearney, who was present at the conference:
“The procurement industry is at an inflection point with agentic AI. Now is the time to learn, adopt, and embrace AI. Zip Forward brings together the leaders who are actually implementing these technologies, not just talking about them. There’s tremendous value in learning from peers in-person. As humans, we learn through social interactions and connections.”
Zip is the world’s leading agentic procurement orchestration platform, empowering businesses to accelerate the procurement process, mitigate risk, and drive growth by offering a single front door to unify the teams, tasks, and tools involved in working with suppliers. With Zip, businesses can maximize employee adoption of purchasing policies and increase spend visibility and control. As the leading solution for optimizing business spend, Zip's AI-powered platform is trusted by hundreds of leading enterprises worldwide, including AMD, Anthropic, Coinbase, Discover, Dollar Tree, Instacart, Invesco, Lyft, Northwestern Mutual, Prudential, Reddit, Sephora, and Snowflake to maximize the ROI of every dollar.
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