Lio Raises $30 Million Led by a16z to Deploy Autonomous AI Procurement Agents

Lio Technologies, previously known as askLio, has closed a $30 million Series A funding round to scale its agentic AI platform for enterprise procurement. The investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from SV Angels, Harry Stebbings, and Y Combinator. This new capital brings the company total funding to $33 million as it prepares to accelerate its expansion into the United States and deepen its product capabilities.

Modern procurement remains a heavily manual administrative function despite billions spent annually on software. Lio aims to solve this by moving beyond simple co-pilots toward fully autonomous agents that execute purchasing end-to-end. These agents manage everything from triaging requests and comparing suppliers to negotiating contracts and onboarding vendors across existing ERP systems.

Unlike traditional SaaS tools that require constant human oversight, Lio uses Agent Operating Procedures to perform work at machine speed. Customers including Walmart, Munich Re, and Schaeffler are already using the platform to manage billions in enterprise spend. Early reports indicate that the technology can reduce manual labor by up to 85 percent while securing incremental savings of 10 percent through better sourcing and negotiation.

The shift from askLio to Lio marks a pivot from a query-based assistant to a delegate-based workforce. CEO Vlad Keil believes that the procurement department of the future will scale through compute rather than headcount. This approach allows human teams to transition from executing mundane tasks to supervising a coordinated network of AI buyers that work across the open web and internal contracts.

Investors like a16z see procurement as a prime candidate for the next generation of business software. Partner Seema Amble noted that the industry is moving into a phase of multi-agent execution where AI handles complex, multi-step workflows autonomously. This funding ensures Lio remains at the forefront of the transition to AI-native back-office operations. More details can be found at lio.ai.