Why Coupa Acquired Category Management Specialist Cirtuo

Coupa has confirmed the acquisition of Cirtuo, a Croatia-based firm known for its AI-powered category management platform.

Announced at Coupa Inspire 2025, the move builds on Coupa’s aim to develop autonomous procurement by embedding advanced AI into its Total Spend Management solution.

Procurement teams face increasing demands to balance costs while aligning with goals such as sustainability, risk mitigation and innovation. Traditional approaches often leave a gap between long-term strategic plans and day-to-day purchasing activity.

By combining Coupa’s spend management tools with Cirtuo’s technology, users can now better manage that disconnect, taking category strategies through to execution in a single platform.

AI turns category planning into action

Procurement professionals often struggle with converting strategic plans into actual supplier actions.

The integration between Coupa and Cirtuo tackles this problem head-on, with end-to-end functionality covering supplier strategy from planning through to monitoring. This unified setup lets businesses build and execute robust, data-informed plans while tracking the savings and value generated from them.

Key features of Cirtuo’s platform now available to Coupa customers include:

• Guided Category Strategy: This tool walks procurement teams through a structured interview-style process to build category strategies. It doesn’t require extensive training, allowing users to conduct detailed spend analysis and draw practical insights from data.

• Guided Supplier Strategy: By linking supplier plans with broader category strategies, users can strengthen supplier relationships while ensuring every strategy aligns with core business needs. It also incorporates relationship-based metrics to support this alignment.

• Initiative Management and Value Tracking: Procurement teams can track key initiatives across savings, supplier relationships and risk. Each initiative has clear ownership, tasks, milestones and deadlines, giving stakeholders better visibility and making it easier to show tangible business value.

Drasko Jelavic, CEO at Cirtuo, says the integration will benefit procurement teams looking to bring strategy closer to execution.

He continues: “Cirtuo empowers procurement teams to build AI-guided, insight-driven strategies that align with business priorities and flow directly into tactical activities resulting in seamless, closed-loop procurement processes."

Supporting a smarter procurement workflow

For Coupa, the move closes a gap in its strategic sourcing product suite.

Salvatore Lombardo, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Coupa, explains the broader vision behind the acquisition.

“Transforming the end-to-end procurement process requires reimagining technology's role," he says.

"We're investing heavily in Gen AI to automate routine tasks, enhance strategic decision-making, and bring autonomous procurement to market."

By joining forces with Cirtuo, Coupa can now offer customers a more complete solution that brings together analysis, strategy and execution.

This integrated approach aims to help businesses generate savings not just by cutting costs, but by improving how they understand and meet procurement demands across various categories—especially direct spend, which often carries the most complexity.

Trusted by global brands

Cirtuo’s platform is already used by several major international organisations, with its customer base including Ball Corporation, B.Braun, Molson Coors, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Utz Brands and Walmart.

The company has gained recognition from procurement specialists and tech experts alike for its effective, practical tools that support procurement transformation.

The acquisition brings these tools into the Coupa ecosystem, where they are expected to offer broader impact across industries looking to digitise and modernise their procurement operations.

“We're excited to join Coupa as businesses embrace digital transformation in the AI era,” Drasko concludes. 

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