The a16z Show · Friday, October 2, 2026
Vlad Kyle believes AI agents represent a trillion-dollar business opportunity in procurement by addressing its historically frustrating and manual nature. He argues that unlike previous tools that only improved efficiency, AI agents can fundamentally change how people work, driving significant business impact and savings, potentially increasing profits by 1% which is equivalent to a 10% increase in sales.
“And the reason for that is like the... all of the tools. they just made the process more efficient. That's all. But they never changed how those people actually work.”
“And it's like crazy to see that they work in emails and on Microsoft Teams and in Excel sheets and PowerPoints. It's like their main channel where they work on. And it's like zero... like zero AI enabled, obviously, in this part.”
“Right, so like, it feels like it's unnecessary, but like I told you like some examples. So like, it has like obviously crazy P&L impact, but it has impact on like the whole economy. Right, so we're like, we are talking about like, how data centers are built, how aircrafts are built, how cars are built, how drones are built. So it's, extremely important, that you have a fixed procurement process, not only to like make it happen and build something. But then also when you talk about, like when you look at like the competitive landscape, so to get like 1% margin increase, you need to make 10% more revenue, 10% more sales. So like if you just manage to get like 1% savings, it's like equals like 10% of sales that you have to do to get the same outcome in your P&L. So it's tremendously important. And like you combine all of those three things”