AI-Powered Procurement Solutions: Transforming Business Processes

The co-founders of Zip transformed procurement by simplifying approval processes, significantly benefiting major enterprises.

### Revolutionizing Procurement: AI Solutions for Business Efficiency
* 💼 "My co-founder, Lou, and I, both former engineering and product leaders at Airbnb, identified a **confusing procurement process** that needed **simplification**."
* 🔍 We created a **single point of access** for employees to request purchases, streamlining the approval process across various departments like **budget, legal, and IT**.
* 🤖 Our solution leverages **generative AI** to handle vast amounts of **unstructured data**, including contracts and invoices, to **enhance procurement efficiency** for enterprise customers.
* 💰 With significant funding, we are investing in our AI lab to further develop **practical applications of procurement data** and improve our offerings.
* 🏢 We are proud to collaborate with major enterprises like Discover Financial and Snowflake, which have reported **substantial savings** through our platform, including Discover's **elimination of over 3,000 unnecessary business approvals**.
* 📊 Procurement represents the **second largest area of spending** for businesses globally, amounting to **trillions of dollars**, highlighting the **immense opportunity for optimization**.
* 🌟 Our partnership with OpenAI has been fruitful, as seen in Coinbase's experience, where they've **saved thousands of hours** by **automating invoice processing** through our system.

Used to work at Airbnb, and you had a specific job, and you were basically like, This isn't working. So you went with some friends and colleagues and designed something better and were like, You know what, let's just start a company that does this. That's pretty fair, right? No, that's absolutely fair. So my co-founder, Lou, and I were both engineering and product leaders at Airbnb, and we had to go through this confusing procurement process of if we need to buy something in the business, what are all the approvals that are required, right, between budget and legal and I.T. and security and all the different teams? And that's what we solved. We started to solve for it by providing one front door for any employee in the business to request to purchase. I'm really interested that your AI powered. What form is this generative AI? ML Broad AI because you're serving open AI, for example.

So you built upon that large language model. How does that all go? What are you building that they can't internally for their own process? Procurement? Yeah, that's a great question. It's absolutely generative A.I. And if you think about the procurement process as a whole, right, we have access to so much relatively unstructured data, right? When employees at organizations are buying things, there are millions of contracts, invoices, order forms, so much data that's available, and we can take A.I. and actually apply it in a really, really practical way, which is what we do for our enterprise customers today, to do everything from helping pass invoices to reading messages and contracts for risks and the like. You're with the money hiring, engineering, talent, R&D talent, you're setting up an AI lab and I go back to really what is underlying all of this. Are you building your own large language models to be able to do this?

Are you looking to develop that more with these tools that you want to build in the lab? That's a great question. So we absolutely are using these funds to invest and create in the iLab and really double-click on if, you know, like I sort of said, like the data that we have access to as part of procurement and really thinking about how do we best apply it in a practical way. And so there's more that we'll have to share there in the coming months and so which I'll allow me using. So we today largely use the OpenAI models. I broke my own rule, which is I always start on what's newest and fresh, but I wanted the backstory because it was 52 years ago that you and I first met. So in that time you've raised a lot of money. You have a decent valuation, more than 2 billion. But have you built a business in that

time? Have you managed to take this product and technology and actually sell it to other businesses and enterprises who in turn are using it themselves? Yeah, of course. We've been really privileged to work with some of the largest enterprises in the world, companies like Discover, Financial, Snowflake, Prudential, Coinbase, and many others. And even as an example, Discover Financial has saved over 3000 different business approvals that they've realized they don't need anymore, or Snowflake has over $305 million of zip-supported savings logged. What we find is that procurement is actually the second largest area of spend for any business in the world after payroll, right? It's trillions of dollars in the world that, you know, employees of companies are buying, you know, for office supplies, software, and the like. And so there's so much opportunity. And so you yourselves building on top of open AI. What's that been like? You know, in the news cycle, it's pretty

chaotic when it comes open. I bet as a customer or a partner, what was it like for you? I'd have to say it's been great. And the feedback that we've received from customers has been really positive. As an example, Coinbase has saved thousands and thousands of hours with zip processing, you know, hundreds of thousands of invoices in a much more automated way.

Zip Funding Round Boosts Valuation Path to $2.2 Billion

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The co-founders of the company, former Airbnb leaders, aimed to simplify the confusing procurement process for businesses by providing a single platform for employee purchase requests.

They are using generative AI to analyze unstructured data from contracts, invoices, and order forms, offering practical solutions for enterprise customers.

The company is also hiring talent and setting up an AI lab, potentially building their own large language models to enhance their services.

Investing in the iLab and Business Growth

The company is using funds to invest in the iLab, focusing on applying procurement data practically.

They have worked with major enterprises like Discover Financial and Snowflake, helping them achieve significant cost savings.

Procurement is identified as the second largest area of spend for businesses, presenting a vast opportunity for growth.

Customers and partners have had a great experience with zip processing, receiving positive feedback.

Coinbase, as an example, has saved thousands of hours by automating the processing of hundreds of thousands of invoices.

This automation has significantly improved efficiency for businesses.