Vertice has acquired Vendr, combining two procurement software groups with operations in the UK and US.
London-based Vertice will combine Vendr's software pricing information with its own procurement data to create a dataset covering more than USD $75 billion in indirect spend. The combined data includes 250,000 negotiated contracts, more than 2 million price points and information on 32,000 vendors.
The acquisition brings together two venture-backed businesses focused on giving procurement and finance teams more visibility into software pricing and contract negotiations. They argue that buyers have often entered negotiations with less information than sellers, particularly in software and cloud spending.
Vendr built its business around software pricing benchmarks and negotiation support in the US market. Vertice has developed a broader procurement platform that includes intake, purchasing workflows and automated negotiation tools.
Under the deal, Vendr customers will gain access to Vertice's intake-to-procure system, while Vertice customers will be able to use the expanded pricing dataset within the platform. The combined group serves more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including ARM, Brex, Duolingo, Twilio and Santander.
Data scale
At the centre of the transaction is the value of proprietary procurement data. Vertice said the combined information spans software, cloud and services spend, and includes records of real negotiations between buyers and vendors. That material is being used to train automated tools that can assist procurement teams with vendor comparisons, renewals and negotiation planning.
Its autonomous negotiation agent, Ana, has been trained on hundreds of thousands of negotiations. Buyers can set commercial priorities, policies and thresholds, and the software then engages directly with vendors.
Vertice and Vendr together operate more than 60 procurement AI agents across workflows including intake, pricing optimisation, process management and third-party risk review.
Roy Tuvey, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vertice, said: "Vertice and Vendr have shared a vision for AI in procurement: to build purpose-designed AI agents trained on real-world data and tailored to specific procurement use cases. By bringing these teams together, we can accelerate everything - from the breadth of agents we can build to the commercial impact we deliver for customers.
"We are setting a new benchmark for what procurement teams should expect from AI procurement platforms. Our combined software pricing data and vendor intelligence has 2M+ price points and surpasses that of our nearest competitors by an order of magnitude. With deeper insight into vendor pricing, commercial terms, sales tactics and risk, our customers will consistently achieve stronger procurement outcomes.
"Training our AI, including 'Ana', our autonomous negotiation agent, on this same rich, procurement-specific dataset makes it even more powerful. Our agents work around the clock, helping customers reduce manual effort while delivering best-in-class savings."
Backers and growth
Both companies have attracted substantial investor backing. Vendr raised USD $216 million in total and reached a valuation above USD $1 billion in its 2022 Series B round, backed by Craft Ventures and SoftBank. Vertice is backed by investors including Bessemer and Lakestar.
Vertice said it has grown 437% over the past three years. It was also recognised by the Financial Times as the UK's fastest-growing scale-up and has appeared in UK technology rankings this year.
The business was founded by brothers Roy and Eldar Tuvey, who previously built security companies ScanSafe and Wandera. Based on figures disclosed by Vertice, those businesses were later sold to Cisco and Jamf respectively for a combined USD $583 million.
Buyer information gap
The rationale for the acquisition reflects a broader shift in corporate procurement, as companies seek to bring more data and automation into purchasing decisions that can run into millions of dollars. Software spending has been a particular focus because pricing structures, discounting and contract terms often vary significantly between customers.
Ryan Neu, Chief Executive Officer of Vendr, said: "Vendr was founded on a simple observation: buyers were making million-dollar purchasing decisions with only a fraction of the information available to the vendor across the table. We spent years closing that gap, building the data, tooling and negotiation expertise to rebalance that dynamic.
"Joining Vertice means that intelligence is now significantly richer - by far the most comprehensive available - and embedded directly within the platform where procurement decisions are made. I'm proud of what we built independently, and even more excited about what our two organisations can build together."
The combined company said procurement teams are using its tools across software purchasing, renewals, workflow management and supplier assessment, with the expanded dataset now at the core of those decisions.