Lio Raises $30M Series A to Automate Enterprise Procurement
Lio, formerly known as askLio, has raised a $30 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from SV Angel, Harry Stebbings, and Y Combinator. Pioneer Fund invested in Lio's seed round, along with YC, backing the company early out of the S23 batch.
Procurement is one of the largest spend categories in the enterprise, yet enterprises spend over $180 billion annually on procurement talent compared to roughly $10 billion on procurement software, a gap that reflects how much work still happens manually. Lio's pitch is that the answer isn't more software or more headcount. Rather than adding another layer of procurement software, the company provides enterprises with a virtual, agentic procurement department whose agents execute the same standard operating procedures as experienced buyers, shared service centers, or outsourced BPOs, but at machine speed.
CEO Vladimir Keil teamed up with Lukas Heinzmann and Till Wagner in 2023 to launch the company. The three had firsthand experience with the dysfunction: after working at enterprises like SAP, they experienced the procurement problem firsthand and set out to fix it.
Lio's agents triage requests, analyze quotes, compare suppliers, negotiate, onboard vendors, and execute purchases end-to-end across ERPs, systems of record, inboxes, contracts, and the open web. The platform sits on top of existing procurement software and ERPs with no rip-and-replace required.
"Every previous generation of procurement technology was built on the same assumption, that humans will do the work and technology will help them do it faster. We take a fundamentally different approach. Instead of building software to help humans do procurement work faster, Lio deploys AI agents that execute the workflow themselves."
— Vladimir Keil, CEO of Lio, speaking to TechCrunch
The results so far are notable: the company reports a 95% adoption rate, 85% reduction in manual work, 10% incremental cost savings, and 100% customer retention. In less than two years, Lio has grown to over 500,000 users across more than 100 enterprises. Its agents have managed billions of dollars in enterprise spend across dozens of Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies. Customers include Munich Re, Brose, and Novozymes.
According to a16z, when customers see the demo, "they're immediately taken aback by a level of automation that few believed software could achieve," with employees now able to complete a purchase in just two clicks.
In one case, a global manufacturer automated 75% of its previously outsourced procurement operations within six months. The new capital will be used to accelerate product development and support Lio's expansion into the U.S.
a16z partner Seema Amble led the deal on the firm's side. The round also included a group of procurement executives and founders as angel investors.