Coupa adds Tonkean in latest AI acquisition push 

Latest acquisition follows Rossum purchase as Coupa races to unify AI agents and global trade workflows

Coupa executives said the Tonkean acquisition strengthens the company’s effort to build a fully integrated AI-native procurement and supply chain ecosystem. (Photo: Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

Cloud-based spend management platform Coupa announced Wednesday it is acquiring workflow automation startup Tonkean, marking the company’s second AI-focused acquisition in less than two weeks as it expands its push into autonomous supply chain and procurement technology.

The acquisition follows Coupa’s May 12 announcement that it had acquired intelligent document processing firm Rossum during the company’s Inspire 2026 conference in Las Vegas.

Financial terms of the Tonkean deal were not disclosed.

Coupa executives said the acquisition adds advanced workflow orchestration and AI-driven automation capabilities to the company’s growing “agentic trade network,” which is aimed at automating procurement, invoicing and supplier transactions across global supply chains.

“The acquisition of Tonkean is game-changing for Coupa and the market,” Coupa CEO Leagh Turner said in a news release. “With the acquisitions of Rossum and Tonkean, in short order, we have now amassed all the assets to make this promise possible for both buyers and suppliers at a time when buying and selling is getting more complex and costly.”

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Tonkean developed a no-code workflow automation platform that helps enterprise procurement, legal and operations teams automate intake, approvals and internal processes using AI-powered orchestration tools.

Coupa said Tonkean’s technology includes more than 250 native connectors and supports multi-agent orchestration and agent-to-agent coordination, allowing enterprises to automate complex workflows without replacing existing software systems.

Executives said the platform can reduce operational cycle times by 50% and save operations teams more than 30 hours per week by eliminating manual handoffs and repetitive tasks.

The acquisition is part of a broader AI expansion strategy Coupa outlined during its Inspire 2026 conference earlier this month in Las Vegas. During the event, executives unveiled several AI-focused products, including Coupa Compose and Coupa Catalyst, while emphasizing the growing role of AI agents, orchestration and automation in supply chain management.

Coupa executives said the company has processed more than $10 trillion in cumulative spend data over the past two decades and is leveraging that dataset to build AI-native procurement and supply chain applications.

Tonkean becomes the fourth strategic acquisition tied to Coupa’s autonomous spend management strategy, following earlier acquisitions of Cirtuo, Scoutbee and Rossum.

Salvatore Lombardo, Coupa’s chief product and technology officer, said the company is building what it describes as the “#1 agentic trade network.”

“With Tonkean natively embedded in Coupa, customers get best-in-class orchestration and the best spend platform they already trust, in a single, unified agentic architecture,” Lombardo said in a statement.

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Noi Mahoney

Noi Mahoney is a Texas-based journalist who covers cross-border trade, logistics and supply chains for FreightWaves. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in English in 1998. Mahoney has more than 20 years experience as a journalist, working for newspapers in Maryland and Texas. Contact nmahoney@freightwaves.com