Aron Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to ease the work of procurement teams, launched today with $8 million in funding.
The company raised the capital over two rounds. The first was led by Menlo Ventures while the second, more recent deal, a $6 million seed investment, was led by Storm Ventures.
Procurement teams find new suppliers through a process known as a request for quote, or RFQ. The basic idea is to ask multiple prospective suppliers to place a bid for the same contract. Those bids contain not only a price offer but also merchandise delivery terms. Procurement professionals analyze the submissions and pick the supplier with the best proposal.
Historically, the RFQ process involved a significant amount of manual work. Procurement teams have to send follow-ups to suppliers that don’t submit an offer in a timely manner. In many cases, it’s also necessary to clarify missing or erroneous bid details.
Aron has built a cloud platform that automates the task. It spins up AI agents that take over the supplier back-and-forth involved in the RFQ workflow. The agents collect bids from prospective suppliers via email, send follow-ups and organize the collected data.
Companies usually set up dedicated data collection portals to manage RFQ projects. Aron says that its agents remove the need for such portals, which avoids the associated software expenses.
If a supplier’s offer is accepted at the end of the RFQ process, it submits a contract to make the deal official. Aron says that its agents can automatically scan such contracts for issues. They do so by comparing each proposed clause against a company’s internal procurement policies.
Aron also promises to save time for procurement teams after a supply agreement is signed. According to the company, its platform spots invoices that diverge from the price specified in the associated contract. Additionally, it monitors contracts that renew automatically and notifies users before every renewal.
Aron’s AI agents make decisions based on information in a so-called knowledge graph. It’s a data structure that links together an organization’s invoices, supplier contracts and related documents. Such files are difficult to review manually because companies often store them in different systems.
Aron says that customers can realize a return on investment within three weeks of deploying its platform. Furthermore, it promises to shorten the RFQ workflow by an average of 21%. That value proposition helped the company win over several mid-market and Fortune 10 clients ahead of today’s launch.
“Teams get their time back, and the CFO gets a number they can trust with fast ROI,” said Aron founder and Chief Executive Officer Dominic Toselli.
Aron will use the proceeds from its funding round to enhance its platform.
