askLio

Lio, formerly known as askLio, is an enterprise software company that markets a multi-agent AI system for procurement. Incoming purchase requests are handled by specialized agents operating in parallel — researching vendors, negotiating terms, managing approvals and tracking deliveries — rather than by sequential manual workflows. The product catalog of agents advertised on the company site includes a PR Review Agent, Freetext Agent, Guided Buying Agent, Sourcing Agent, RFQ Agent, Negotiation and Contract Negotiation Agents, Supplier Onboarding Agent, Approvals Agent, Order Confirmation Agent, Goods Receipt Agent, Invoice Agent, Search Agent and Procurement Intelligence Agent, alongside a Lio Supplier Portal, Lio X, Agent Operating Procedures and an "Agent Supervisor" concept.

The company frames its offering as five layers of procurement transformation that customers can adopt in any order, rather than a single automation tool. Its Series A announcement positions Lio as a virtual, agentic procurement department that executes the same standard operating procedures as buyers, shared service centers or outsourced BPOs — triaging requests, analyzing quotes, comparing suppliers, negotiating, onboarding vendors and completing purchases across ERPs, systems of record, inboxes, contracts and the open web. The company's earlier product, launched via Y Combinator in 2023, was narrower: an AI copilot embedded in MS Teams or a P2P system that parsed free-text purchase requests, refined specifications, routed spend to existing contracts, vendors and catalogs, and enabled spend analysis and category management.

Founding story

Founder and CEO Vlad Keil had run a profitable startup by age 22, co-founded an EdTech firm in Munich, and in 2021 co-founded the AI startup Gabriel, which partnered with the German federal police; he later consulted enterprises on procurement. Co-founder Lukas Heinzmann is an AI engineer with a Master's in AI/ML from TU Munich who was an early employee of a startup acquired by Audi and technical lead on the myAudi app before co-founding Gabriel AI. Co-founder and COO Till Wagner worked in design and product roles at AI startups including one in San Francisco and on projects at Deloitte; his difficulty buying equipment using procurement software while at SAP is cited as the inspiration for the company.

Business model

B2B enterprise software, characterized by a third-party database as a B2B SaaS model. Lio positions itself as an alternative to scaling procurement headcount or outsourcing to BPOs, arguing that enterprises spend roughly $180 billion annually on procurement talent versus about $10 billion on procurement software.

Traction

Since launching in 2023, Lio's agents have managed billions of dollars in enterprise spend and are used by dozens of Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies. Reported customer outcomes include over 95% adoption rates, 85% less manual work, 10% incremental savings and 100% customer retention; one global tier-1 industrial manufacturer is said to have automated 75% of previously outsourced procurement work within six months, freeing the equivalent of 10 full-time employees. An earlier third-party article cited average savings of $2.6 million per enterprise per year.

Latest developments

On 5 March 2026 the company announced a $30 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from SV Angel, Harry Stebbings and Y Combinator, taking total funding to $33 million, to be used for product development and U.S. expansion. The company also displays a DPW Growth Award and publicizes a collaboration with Schaeffler.