Zip: Defining a new category of agentic procurement orchestration

For Zip, this year’s DPW New York event has been a particularly exciting one. The business hosted a side event the day before – the Zip AI Summit – and that morning revealed major news: that Zip has launched 50+ AI agents. These agents have been purpose-built for the next phase of procurement, and Zip believes the shift to agentic procurement orchestration is what will take the sector from 10X – the main topic of DPW Amsterdam just last October – to 100X improvement.

“I think this is the beginning of the most exciting chapter for procurement,” says Rujul Zaparde, Co-Founder and CEO of Zip. “The next two-to-five years are going to be really defining for the world around us. I’m so excited that this launch is the first real application of tangible AI in the procurement space.”

Taking agentic orchestration to the next level

Agentic procurement orchestration is an entirely new category for procurement, and Zip is enormously proud to have created something so groundbreaking. “If you take the entire procurement orchestration process – the workflow, the teams, all the reviews that occur – agentic procurement orchestration really just applies specific AI agents to components of procurement orchestration to automate the process,” Zaparde explains. 

For example, one AI agent Zip has launched is the contract renewal comparison agent. What that agent does is look at a new contract, look at the original contract, and compare the data and the difference between every single component, from price to liabilities. “It does that one thing, but it does it really, really well,” says Zaparde. “And if you think about how that process would work without an agent, you’ve got a human spending hours looking at two different contracts side-by-side on a screen. So this is real ROI; real time saved for people.”

Tariff agent

Another agent Zip has released is the tariff agent. Tariffs are a tricky subject in the US right now, and they’re causing concern and confusion. However, the tariff agent can be deployed into the Zip workflow, and it will look at the most recent live regulations and the situation around tariffs. It will examine the requests of what it is that’s being purchased, determine whether that request is subject to tariffs today or in the future, and automatically report back on the risks. “It’s all pretty much instant,” Zaparde says, making it one of the most currently relevant agents that exists. 

These types of agents are proof that AI is now central to procurement strategies as we move forward, and that will only intensify. “When there are innovation cycles like AI, they typically start with the front of house,” says Zaparde. “Customer support is a pretty obvious application for AI, because a lot of money gets spent on thousands of support employees who are doing pretty redundant work. So it makes sense for innovation to start there, and eventually make its way to back of house. Procurement is at the very core of how any company operates, so I absolutely believe that with Zip’s AI agent launch, AI has truly arrived for procurement.”

Eyes on the future

Zaparde foresees Zip’s new AI agents driving speed, growth, and value for modern procurement teams across the board. Zaparde and his team have spent a lot of time testing and configuring Zip’s agents to do specific things, and as a result, he feels that for the first time, he’s got a front-row view of the future. 

“While testing, I can pretend to be a requester and submit a request in Zip, and actually watch the steps of that request, see them automatically approve themselves in real time as I’m simply staring at the screen,” he says. “All because the agent for a specific kind of review is computing the results and making a determination. And it may choose to escalate and pull a human into the loop, or it might have enough information to take action and make the approval itself. It’s incredible to watch it happen live.”

To see something he’s created come to life in front of him is a revelation for Zaparde. There’s so much noise in the AI space, and Zaparde is the first to encourage anyone considering the application of AI and AI agents to get the product live in order to really see it. Stirring up hype and having good marketing is one thing, but seeing the real product actually work is a game-changer.

Maintaining a sense of humanity

For all AI and AI agents can do, the human connection is still vitally important. “AI will never be able to replace judgement,” says Zaparde. “A lot of the strategic thinking we do today is still absolutely vital when it comes to what we should procure and when. Someone told me that back when the wheel was invented, a lot of people who were carrying things from point A to point B were afraid they’d lose their jobs because you could put so many things in carts. Of course, those people were still needed – there was just a higher order of work required. The same analogy applies here today.”

Getting the layers right

For Zaparde, it’s critical that AI agents live in the procurement orchestration layer. The role data integrations and orchestration play when it comes to enabling AI to work effectively across procurement workflows is a crucial one. “If you have a risk system and an agent in that system providing an insight, that agent only has access to risk data,” Zaparde explains. “It doesn’t know whether they’re out of good standing with you in their contract, because it’s not in the risk system. 

“The orchestration layer has access to the risk level data, the contract and legal level data, the payment and ERP invoice-level data. And so, an orchestration system like Zip is best positioned to drive the best, most comprehensive insight that any AI agent can deliver. For that, you have to have integrations. We’re fortunate that we built our AI agents on Zip’s native integration platform, so you can actually connect and pull data out of other systems Zip is connected to, and deliver a comprehensive insight at the end of the process.”

Feeding the appetite for next-gen procurement

Zip was a vocal presence at DPW New York 2025. As well as the side event before DPW kicked off, Zip was a leading sponsor with a dominant booth, and was involved with two onstage discussions with customers Prudential and OpenAI. Both of these sessions proved inspiring stories of forward-thinking companies utilising Zip to truly push the envelope, and to be able to sit onstage at such a prestigious event, and openly dive into the true benefits that Zip and its agents are bringing to customers, is invaluable for all involved. 

That’s just one reason why DPW is so special to procurement professionals. “It’s incredible to see the energy,” says Zaparde. “Innovation requires adoption, and to get adoption, you have to get people excited, benchmarketing, and learning from each other. Ultimately, that’s the real value of DPW.”