Vertice acquires Vendr to create what it describes as the largest procurement dataset.

      Vertice has acquired Vendr. The AI procurement company based in London announced on Monday that it has taken over the US software-pricing firm, a move that it claims will form the world's largest procurement intelligence dataset by merging the data from both companies regarding their purchases and negotiation strategies. The financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed.

      According to Vertice, the unified dataset encompasses over $75 billion in global indirect spending across 32,000 vendors and includes real pricing information and human interactions from 250,000 negotiated contracts involving software and services. Roy Tuvey, Vertice's founder and CEO, stated that the consolidated software-pricing data exceeds two million price points, which he claims is "by an order of magnitude" greater than that of its closest competitors.

      The argument is that increased data leads to enhanced automated negotiation capabilities. Vertice utilizes an autonomous negotiation agent known as Ana, which has supposedly been trained on hundreds of thousands of real negotiations. Buyers input their priorities, policies, and thresholds, while Ana interacts directly with the vendor to achieve goals like cost savings, improved payment terms, or policy compliance. Tuvey noted that integrating Vendr’s negotiation data would make Ana "even more powerful."

      The two companies now collectively operate over 60 procurement AI agents that are regularly used by more than 1,000 global clients, handling processes from intake and pricing optimization to third-party risk assessment. Clients such as ARM, Brex, Duolingo, Twilio, and Santander will be able to access the combined data directly through the Vertice platform, which will present insights at critical decision-making moments. Additionally, Vendr's customers will have access to Vertice’s Intake-to-Procure platform.

      “Vertice and Vendr share a common vision for AI in procurement,” Tuvey explained, emphasizing the aim of creating specialized AI agents trained on real data for particular procurement tasks. Ryan Neu, Vendr’s CEO, characterized the acquisition as a continuation of the company's original mission, highlighting that buyers entering million-dollar contracts often have significantly less information than the vendors involved. Joining Vertice, he asserted, enhances this intelligence "substantially" and integrates it directly into the procurement decision-making process.

      Vertice, based in London and recognized by the Financial Times as the fastest-growing scale-up in the UK, also operates in New York, Boston, Sydney, Brno, Linz, and Johannesburg. It was founded by brothers Roy and Eldar Tuvey, who previously established ScanSafe and Wandera, which were sold to Cisco and Jamf, respectively.

      The company claims to manage over $75 billion in spending and has been recognized as a leader in Intake-to-Procure platforms by the analyst organization Lionfish Tech Advisors. However, the announcement did not provide specifics regarding the acquisition price, closing date, or how the two companies and their overlapping agent offerings will be integrated, keeping those details confidential for the time being.