Procurement is big, broken, and ripe for AI disruption. It is mission-critical for enterprises, with a market size of $16 billion for the software tools alone. We expect that once the labor spend on procurement work is included, the market is 10 times the size. And — unlike legal, HR and accounting — it has not been transformed by AI… yet. 

Pivot is changing that. We are delighted to announce that Notion Capital is co-leading Pivot’s $40m Series B funding round, alongside Forestay Capital, Greyhound, and existing investors and procurement industry veterans. Pivot is the AI operating system for procurement, managing the complete lifecycle in a single platform, so enterprises can operate at the pace of AI without losing clarity, control or connection to financial reality. 

Procurement: A broken category

The procurement function has been let down by entrenched legacy software vendors, which haven’t innovated significantly in over 10 years. These vendors don’t have customers; they have hostages. To understand why, we explored the history of procurement software, which we divide into three waves of innovation: 

Evolution from system of record (SoR) 🡪 system of engagement (SoE) 🡪 system of action (SoA) 

• 1990s - early 2000s: System of record innovation – Paper-based procurement processes were digitized by companies like Ariba, GEP and iValua. Ariba (founded in 1996) created the first system of record for the category and mapped linear, predictable approval processes into their software equivalents. Coupa emerged in 2006 as the cloud-oriented challenger. These solutions, however, were built for a time when buying decisions were highly centralized and organizations operated at the pace of paper checklists and email threads. 
• 2010s - early 2020s: System of engagement innovation – For businesses born in the cloud, the old SoRs were no longer fit for purpose. Employees were digital natives, working on Slack and Teams. Meanwhile, purchasing was decentralizing, with employees across departments initiating purchases and coordinating with more stakeholders like legal, IT, security, and HR. 

As a result, a crop of “intake-to-procure” startups emerged to essentially put a pretty “front door” on the legacy procurement systems. However, the underlying antiquated data architecture and related ERP integration problems remained untouched. Compounding the problems, these intake tools only solved one point in the procurement workflow, forcing customers to stitch together multiple tools. Customers were stuck with a high total cost of ownership, maintenance challenges, and further fragmented data.

• 2023 onwards: System of action innovation – With the capabilities that AI offers, now is the time for innovation at the system of (agentic) action level. Agentic AI means that routine processes can be automated, freeing procurement professionals to focus on higher level work that calls for their judgement. However, to unlock this opportunity, a total reimagining of the data backbone of procurement is required. The legacy SoR and SoE solutions are too rigid and too fragmented to meet the moment. Enter Pivot. 

Reimagining procurement from the ground up for AI agents

Pivot’s core product philosophy is to build a modern, flexible data layer to underlie a new operating system that serves the end-to-end procurement workflows. 

We know that AI agents are only as good as the systems they run on. Agents need two things for successful automation: 

1) accurate data 

2) access to tools for the complete workflow 

Pivot offers both. Its data layer is structured, interconnected, and aligned with financial reality i.e. there is a single source of truth where the data matches the actual spending. With Pivot, AI works on clean, enterprise-grade data from the foundation up — not retrofitted onto a legacy core — so that enterprises can build reliable agents. 

Agents also need access to all of procurement’s toolsets, which Pivot has built for – from the outset. Moreover, the company has invested in deep, real-time ERP connections, prioritizing the accuracy and auditability that enterprises depend on. Pivot can serve the most complex organizations with multiple geographies, entities and ERP systems. 

With these two elements in place — the data layer and the complete workflow — Pivot can replace old procurement systems, and also automate the manual grind. AI agents for benchmarking, intake requests and negotiations are already in production; the stage has been set for a future procurement function that runs itself.

‍Pivot’s secret weapon: its visionary team

What first drew us to Pivot was its founders: Marc-Antoine Lacroix, Romain Libeau and Estelle Giuly, are product builders first and foremost. Marc-Antoine has built one unicorn already, having cofounded the fintech Qonto and served as its CTO and CPO as it scaled to millions of users and over 700 engineers. Romain likewise cofounded Swile and led it to a unicorn valuation and global expansion. 

From the outset, this team set out to lead with their product and technology. They have stuck to a clear product philosophy, never taking any shortcuts as they build to their vision. And now it’s paying off as their platform consistently wins with the Fortune 500 and is emerging as the AI partner of choice for the agentic enterprise.   

The next chapter: Proven and building momentum with enterprises

Pivot has a powerful impact on its customers. For enterprises that chose Pivot, we heard how procurement transforms from an execution drag into a business accelerant. Processes that took weeks are now done in minutes. Business units get on with their work while the procurement and CFO’s offices have closer visibility and control on spend. 

In just three years since founding, Pivot has won high growth tech customers and the Fortune 500 alike, including DoorDash, Wolt, Wix, Lemonade, and Global-E. They are now operating in more than 25 countries, with more than 2,000 vendors onboarded, and processing more than $3 billion in invoices annually.

We expect other enterprises to follow these leaders in adopting AI for procurement. Pivot is built from the system of record up for the agentic enterprise, and we believe it will be the platform that defines how modern finance and procurement teams operate over the next decade. 

Congratulations, Pivot!

Why Notion Capital? A note from the co-founder Marc-Antoine Lacroix…

When we were looking for a new partner, we were looking for someone with high conviction, and Notion Capital really stood out for us. Notion Capital, and Jess, had a clear vision and thesis on what would win in this space, and we sensed very quickly that they believed in us and were convinced that Pivot would be a winner. Also, the amount of work that Jess and the team put into understanding Pivot and its proposition was a clear ‘wow’ for us. 

Even during the fundraising process, Notion Capital brought us so much value through making introductions, asking the right questions, and highlighting our strengths and weaknesses. And now that Notion Capital is officially on board, they have brought even more value to us — the whole process has been amazing. Choosing Notion Capital was a no-brainer and we are delighted to have them as a partner.

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