Why AI Agents Can Beat the Incumbents

Enterprise procurement represents a critical, high-impact business function often neglected by legacy software, creating a significant opportunity for AI-native startups. While incumbents typically offer limited retrieval-based chatbots, AI-native platforms like Lio manage end-to-end workflows by integrating across fragmented systems—including legal, finance, and engineering—to handle complex, multi-stakeholder negotiations. Building trust in these autonomous agents requires a human-in-the-loop approach, allowing systems to learn from expert feedback before scaling to fully autonomous operations. By automating tasks that were previously too labor-intensive to manage, such as small-scale negotiations or real-time supply chain adjustments, these agents deliver substantial P&L improvements. Ultimately, the advantage of AI-native companies lies in their ability to own the entire arc of a transaction, moving beyond simple data retrieval to execute complex, judgment-based tasks that traditional systems of record cannot address.