Coupa Inspire London: AI and Procurement in Focus
After the full-throttle energy of its Las Vegas opener, Coupa brings its Inspire tour to London with a tighter lens and a select audience. This leg of the tour steers the agenda towards supply chain strategy while also letting the full Coupa suite take centre stage.
There’s a clear emphasis on data, AI and the power of networks, all tied together by executive insights and customer-led success stories.
It’s a meeting of minds, both strategic and technical, with leaders keen to take away something actionable as the event lives up to its name.
A clear vision from the top
Leagh Turner, Coupa’s Chief Executive Officer, sets the tone early. In her keynote, she doesn’t just talk about platform capabilities—she lays out a shared ambition. Drawing on John F Kennedy’s 1961 moon-landing pledge, she equates Coupa’s ambition with that same spirit of clarity, scale and credibility.
"Our vision is aspirational... it’s bold enough to stretch our imagination and yet it’s feasible enough to be credible," Leagh says.
From there, she lays out Coupa’s long game. It’s a 19-year journey towards a fully connected, AI-native, multi-sided network—a live ecosystem where buyers and suppliers interact without human intervention, with every transaction improving the next.
“This is not fiction, this is reality like putting a man on the moon,” she says. “We have been building this network that powers the future of trade.”
Coupa doesn’t want to position itself as just another software provider; instead it's presenting itself as the architecture behind a smarter, faster and fairer model of commerce.
Making the network work
Joining Leagh on stage, Salva Lombardo, Coupa’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, drives the point home.
"The network effect is what makes the difference," he says, comparing Coupa’s growing user community to LinkedIn’s multi-sided platform. Just as LinkedIn connects professionals in new and valuable ways, Coupa connects companies, vendors and procurement teams to create a smarter supply chain.
Salva adds that Coupa is evolving from a software company to a "data-driven AI company" and that this shift is just beginning. His confidence in the role of collective intelligence isn’t abstract—it’s grounded in Coupa’s US$8tn of transactional data, which he describes as a "data moat" that enables predictive, profitable decisions at scale.
This vision is backed by numbers, systems and workflows that span the full journey from design to payment for buyers and from quote to invoice for suppliers. Salva acknowledges the supplier experience still has room to improve, but the foundation is in place. With 3,200 customers and more than 10 million suppliers, the scale is already immense.
A celebration of client success
The standout client story of the day comes from Barclays, where Shalini Sahi shares how Coupa is reshaping operations.
“98% of our spend in Barclays globally is now through Coupa, which is roughly in the range of US$9bn,” she says, drawing applause from the room.
More than just a volume stat, she explains how process improvements drive performance. Vendor onboarding times are down 70% for low-risk categories and supplier payment rates exceed 95%, aligning with Barclays’ board-level citizenship targets. It’s not just automation for efficiency—Shalini points to how automation frees up internal capacity to focus on high-quality, value-adding work.
The audience, made up of clients from Mastercard, Diageo, Nestlé, HSBC, DS Smith and AB InBev, is clearly engaged as there’s a strong sense that Coupa’s platform is part of something larger – a shift in how global business is structured around intelligence, collaboration and real-time data.
As the day continues, Coupa Inspire London attendees look for connection and challenge.
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