Coupa bets big on AI, optimization as supply chains face new volatility

LAS VEGAS — Coupa used its Inspire 2026 conference this week to showcase a broad push into AI-driven supply chain management, as executives from major global manufacturers detailed how digital sourcing and network optimization tools are helping companies reduce costs, accelerate procurement decisions and manage increasingly volatile logistics networks.

During the opening keynote at the Coupa Inspire 2026 conference on Tuesday, CEO Leagh Turner unveiled new AI-focused products, including the launch of Coupa Compose and Coupa Catalyst, while also announcing the acquisition of AI-based intelligent document processing company Rossum.

Turner said global supply chains are entering a new phase where automation, AI agents and data orchestration are becoming central to procurement and logistics operations. “Because in a world of constant change, global trade, complex supply chains, shifting job roles, the advantage no longer comes from hard work,” Turner said during the keynote.

“It comes from intelligence, orchestration, and automation.” Coupa is a cloud-based, AI-native platform designed for total spend management and supply chain optimization.

Coupa executives said their platform has processed more than $10 trillion in cumulative spend over the past two decades and plans to expand its AI capabilities across procurement, invoicing and supply chain workflows.

The conference, held Monday through Wednesday at ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, brought together hundreds of procurement, finance and supply chain executives focused on spend management, sourcing and supply chain technology. Turner said the Rossum acquisition brings a purpose-built, AI-first architecture that moves beyond legacy OCR technology Coupa.

“The combined value of Coupa and Rossum has been proven in AP and invoicing, and we see massive future value in applying Rossum’s T-LLM and AI-first technology across the Coupa platform,” Turner said in a statement. “We’ve been able to deliver over $300 billion in customer savings over the past 20 years.

With Rossum, we believe we can help them save the next $300 billion in five with a system of decision and intelligence that is unrivaled.” The launch of Coupa Compose aims to provide a comprehensive environment to build, manage, and orchestrate a digital workforce of AI agents, transforming how work is executed across procurement, finance, and supply chain.

“With Coupa Compose, we are empowering our customers to easily build, deploy, orchestrate and connect agentic AI through our core platform — no migrations, no new code, just instant AI agent activation grounded in our proprietary dataset that generates business outcomes others can’t match,” Salvatore Lombardo, Coupa’s chief product and technology officer, said.

Turner emphasized that AI and automation tools are being positioned as decision-support systems rather than replacements for procurement and supply chain workers. “This is not about replacing people,” Turner said during the keynote. “This means that we are going to eliminate the work that nobody should have ever done in the first place.” Grupo Bimbo, M.

Dias Branco use digital supply chain models to improve profitability Much of the conference discussion centered on how manufacturers are using digital modeling and scenario-planning tools to respond to shifting trade policies, volatile transportation markets and increasingly complex global manufacturing networks. Executives from Grupo Bimbo and M.

Dias Branco discussed how network optimization has become increasingly important as companies expand through acquisitions and global growth. Executives from Grupo Bimbo and M. Dias Branco discuss how automation, digital modeling and scenario planning are reshaping global logistics and procurement during a break out session at Coupa Inspire 2026 in Las Vegas.

(Photo: FreightWaves) Jose Ramos, Grupo Bimbo’s director of supply chain transformation, said the bakery giant’s network includes about 200 manufacturing sites, more than 100 co-manufacturers and roughly 157,000 delivery routes serving 3 million points of sale globally. “We started using Coupa because of this complexity,” Ramos said.

“The network itself is really complex, so we needed a tool that helped us organize, understand and improve the way we were working with that complexity.” Rogério Neto, logistics, industrial and tax network manager at M.

Dias Branco, said the Brazilian food producer has completed seven acquisitions since 2003, forcing the company to integrate multiple manufacturing and distribution systems.

“When we acquire these companies, they come with their own agenda, their own culture, and they do not have synergy, standardization, with anything that we have already on our company,” Neto said. “So it’s a sea of opportunity that we can go and try to attack.”

Executives said digital network models are helping companies make faster decisions around transportation flows, inventory placement, plant locations and production allocation. M. Dias Branco said its optimization efforts helped reduce cost-to-serve by 14% for cookies and 24% for pasta products.

Jabil accelerates procurement and logistics sourcing decisions using digital sourcing tools Meanwhile, executives from Jabil discussed how AI-powered sourcing optimization tools have transformed the company’s logistics procurement operations.

The session, titled “From weeks to hours: How Jabil transformed logistics sourcing with Coupa CSO,” featured Ryan Johnson, Jabil’s director of indirect procurement technology and Source2Pay, alongside Heidi Banks, vice president of global indirect procurement.

Jabil operates more than 100 manufacturing and supply chain facilities across over 25 countries and employs roughly 135,000 to 140,000 workers globally. The company manufactures electronics assemblies, healthcare devices, automotive components and data center infrastructure products.

Banks said logistics sourcing had historically relied heavily on spreadsheets and manual analysis, limiting the company’s ability to evaluate transportation scenarios across its global network. Johnson said Coupa’s sourcing optimization platform now allows Jabil to analyze millions of transportation combinations in a fraction of the time previously required.

“Now, with CSO, it takes hours just in this analysis phase, from weeks to hours on that analysis phase,” Johnson said. “We can do 50-plus scenarios as we see fit within our different sourcing events.”

Jabil said the sourcing transformation generated roughly $25 million in logistics savings and cost avoidance while reducing sourcing cycle times by about one month. The post Coupa bets big on AI, optimization as supply chains face new volatility appeared first on FreightWaves.