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Looking ahead to 2026: What’s next for AI in procurement?

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Insight
Summary

Written by: Jose Oliveira, Geoffrey Boutin

2025 marked a turning point for AI in procurement, but the real disruption was less technological than it was cultural. Rather than seeing AI as a novelty, procurement teams really started getting to grips with it as a strategic amplifier. For many procurement teams, the question for the coming year will be: how can we leverage AI to expand what’s possible? 

Over the course of 2025, we saw AI maturity accelerating within procurement functions. Instead of pursuing niche pilots, our clients partnered with us on practical deployments, including contract summarisation, supplier intelligence, should-cost analysis, and data cleaning, and integrating these into their day-to-day work.  As a result, we have seen the same procurement teams exponentially expanding the number of categories, suppliers, and scenarios that they can cover, becoming empowered to effectively weigh in on more business decisions and drive greater value. What’s more, our clients are now tying AI investment directly to measurable procurement KPIs: cycle time, supplier coverage, savings, and risk mitigation. 

So, what’s next for AI in procurement in 2026? 

Key AI challenges procurement leaders will face in 2026

Procurement teams have made rapid progress in AI adoption over the past year. However, critical challenges remain as procurement functions seek to scale AI’s impact: 

1. Improving data quality and governance 

The main bottleneck to scaling AI is no longer technology, but the fragmented and inconsistent data foundations present in many organisations. Leading procurement teams are investing in intelligent data management: creating a single, trusted source of truth across spend, contracts, and supplier information. Those that fail to address data quality and ownership will struggle to move beyond fragmented pilots. 

2. Shifting from proliferation to consolidation 

Many organisations initially over-invested in isolated AI pilots across multiple cloud environments, only to discover that value was diluted and cost control became challenging. The current trend is toward consolidation – centralising AI capabilities so that procurement, finance, and legal data flow together. Embedding AI within existing platforms (such as ERP and source-to-pay) is now favoured over building standalone tools. 

3. Clarifying ownership and driving collaboration 

AI in procurement requires close collaboration between procurement, IT, and data teams. Organisations that fail to define ownership, responsibilities, and processes for AI initiatives risk stalled progress and unrealised ROI. 

4. Skills and change management 

The shift toward AI-driven procurement demands new skills: prompt engineering, scenario design, and advanced data interpretation. Routine tasks such as manual data entry and basic reporting are being automated, while the value of procurement professionals is now measured by their ability to design scenarios, negotiate strategically, and drive supplier innovation. 

Opportunities: Where AI will drive the most value in 2026

For procurement leaders aiming to drive measurable impact in 2026, the following levers offer the most promise: 

  • Intelligent data foundations: Building unified, high-quality datasets across spend, contracts, and supplier relationships. 
     
  • Embedded AI copilots: Integrating AI-driven recommendations directly within procurement workflows to support RFP writing, real-time risk flagging, and proactive opportunity identification. 
     
  • Dynamic contract and supplier analytics: Moving beyond static reporting to enable real-time insight generation from contracts and supplier performance data. 
     
  • Scalable category intelligence: Leveraging AI to scan global markets, benchmark costs, and democratise market insight across the procurement team, enhancing the team’s expertise and correcting the asymmetry of information between suppliers and procurement teams. 
     
  • Automated insight generation: Using AI to baseline spend, segment suppliers, and generate price benchmarks – freeing up procurement leaders for more strategic activities in engaging the business and suppliers. 

 

These levers will deliver measurable impact within a year and form the stepping stones toward agentic procurement ecosystems: where AI connects, recommends, and learns across use cases, and leads to greater automation that frees even more capacity, in a flywheel effect. 

The next wave of AI in procurement: What’s on the horizon?

  • Agentic AI systems: Autonomous agents capable of performing multi-step reasoning, from designing sourcing strategies to launching supplier searches and drafting RFPs – all while ensuring compliance and alignment with company policies. 
     
  • Voice-enabled procurement: Conversational interfaces that allow users to request real-time insights or action items using natural language. 
     
  • AI–ERP convergence: As enterprise platforms natively embed large language models, the distinction between analytics and execution is fading, making procurement more responsive and data-driven than ever. 
     
  • Knowledge graph–based procurement: Mapping supplier, risk, and contract relationships to create holistic, actionable supply intelligence. 

Where procurement leaders should focus in 2026

To sustain momentum and unlock value in the year ahead, procurement leaders should prioritise three actions: 

  • Get the data right. Build strong, transparent, and connected data foundations across spend, supplier, and contract information. 
     
  • Embed AI where people work. Shift from stand-alone tools to copilots and orchestration platforms integrated into daily workflows. 
     
  • Invest in people. Upskill teams to understand, question, and apply AI insights effectively,  ensuring technology amplifies human expertise rather than replacing it. 

The last year has proven that AI can deliver tangible results; the next will determine who can scale those results responsibly. For leaders ready to invest in data, orchestration, and skills, AI won’t just streamline procurement, it will redefine it.