With an initial investment of $3 million (£2.3 million) Monq– a London based AI startup by the ex-alumni of Revolut and Deutsche Bank has disclosed its objective of the major transformation on how the enterprises negotiate large-scale supplier contracts. Outward VC was the leading investor in the round and other investors were Cornerstone VC, Portfolio Ventures, Octopus Ventures, Endurance Ventures, Lakestar Halo, and several angel investors.
Monq is building a multi-agent AI system, a product that is intended to not only automate but also improve the negotiation of multimillion-pound procurement agreements, which is a corporate area that is still done manually, is very slow and highly dependent on instincts. The company says its platform is a combination of large language model reasoning, contract intelligence, and behavioral science to help procurement teams deal with complex deal structures, spot value areas and make decisions faster.
Yasin Bostancı, Monq co-founder and CEO, said, “One of the last frontiers for real automation is strategic procurement because a lot of it is still done by intuition.” “I saw in all my prior roles that the result is driven by instinct, but at the same time many hours are wasted and a lot of values are left on the table because to go by instinct alone is to have limited success.”
Before, Bostancı was an operating partner within the CEO office of Revolut, the UK-based fintech giant, where he closely witnessed how the firm was constrained by the outdated procurement processes while scaling. His co-founder Duygu Gözeler Porchet, on the other hand, has a solid background in major international banks such as Deutsche Bank and HSBC, where the negotiations for large-scale suppliers and contract structures driven by regulations are the main themes of operational resilience.
The founders see Monq not as the one to take over the decision from humans but as the one that helps enhance human judgment. “The objective we have at Monq is not to take over the decision but to enhance it,” said Bostancı. “We are not only giving the enterprises the speed, clarity, and confidence to negotiate at an entirely new level but also unlocking billions in hidden deal flow, value, and efficiency before that value is lost to the company by delivering the speed, clarity, and confidence to negotiate at an entirely new level while unlocking billions in hidden deal flow, value, and efficiency before that value is lost to the company.”
Porchet emphasized on procurement being the backbone of the business financially and strategically within big organizations.” He said, “The life and death of a business depend on the deals it makes.” “An average enterprise spends more than half of its operating income on purchasing services and/or products to keep the business going, which makes procurement a major contributor to performance, resilience, and growth. We at Monq are taking this challenge head-on by providing the companies with the tools and the courage to negotiate faster, smarter, and at a much larger scale than ever before.”
Investors see procurement as the next big market for AI that is still largely untapped. AI has quickly become an integral part of functions like sales, customer support, and workflow automation but negotiation is still one of the most complicated areas for tech to have an impact because of the delicate nature of the stakeholder behaviors, the long approval processes and the very different contract formats.
“Monq’s AI platform is the game changer that can completely turn around enterprise procurement,” Devin Kohli, partner at Outward VC, said. “There’s a great opportunity for AI innovation in the strategic procurement area and with Monq’s distinct AI-human approach the company is already achieving millions in measurable savings while drastically changing how enterprises work. We are very happy to be working with Yasin, Duygu and the team.”
The startup expects to use the new funds to ramp up the product development and expand its go-to-market activities, such as recruiting more engineers, data scientists, and commercial team members. With the rising economic pressure for cost optimization and supplier resilience, Monq sees that the demand for its services will not only be there but will soar especially if one considers the ongoing global supply chain disruptions.
With both financial backing and early market validation, Monq has come out of stealth mode and is setting its sights at the intelligent negotiation automation forefront — an industry frontier that many believe could be the next wave of enterprise AI adoption.