Coupa acquires Israeli AI startup Tonkean in deal estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars
Acquisition strengthens Coupa’s push to build autonomous AI systems for procurement and enterprise operations.
American software company Coupa is acquiring Israeli startup Tonkean, a developer of AI-based workflow automation and orchestration software, in a deal estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The acquisition marks a significant step in Coupa’s effort to build a broader artificial intelligence layer for corporate procurement and supply chain management, as competition intensifies around so-called “agentic AI” systems capable of autonomously managing enterprise tasks.
Tonkean, founded in 2015 by Sagi Eliyahu and Offir Talmor, has raised approximately $84 million since its inception. Its most recent funding round, a $50 million Series B in 2021 led by Accel, valued the company at around $300 million. Other investors include Foundation Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Magma, SNR, and Slow Ventures.
The company operates a development center in Tel Aviv alongside its headquarters in San Francisco and employs about 80 people.
Tonkean’s software allows enterprises, particularly procurement, legal, finance, and HR departments, to create and manage complex workflows using natural language rather than code. Its platform integrates with more than 250 enterprise systems, enabling organizations to automate approvals, routing, and operational tasks across fragmented software environments.
The acquisition comes as large enterprise software groups race to position themselves around AI agents that can perform increasingly autonomous tasks. Coupa, which was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $8 billion in 2023 and taken private, has accelerated its acquisition strategy in recent months.
Just two weeks ago, the company announced the acquisition of AI document-processing startup Rossum. Over the past year it also acquired Cirtuo and Scoutbee as part of its effort to build autonomous procurement capabilities.
According to Coupa CEO Leagh Turner, acquiring Tonkean accelerates the company’s product roadmap. Tonkean’s orchestration capabilities are expected to be integrated directly into Coupa Compose, the company’s AI platform.
The deal also reflects the growing importance of orchestration technology in enterprise AI. While many companies are building AI agents, managing how those agents interact across corporate systems has become a central challenge.
In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Eliyahu described the transition underway inside large enterprises as a move “from a traditional SaaS-based operational model” toward one where “humans operate as orchestrators, coordinating autonomous agents across policies and connected systems end-to-end.”
He argued that enterprises are moving away from a world in which employees compensate for fragmented software systems and toward one in which AI agents handle operational workflows directly.
“With Tonkean’s enterprise orchestration engine and Coupa’s proprietary $10 trillion dataset, enterprise G&A teams will own, for the first time, a fully connected digital workforce of autonomous AI agents,” Eliyahu wrote.
Coupa executives stressed that the company does not intend to remove humans entirely from critical business processes. CFO Mike Agresta said high-risk decisions would continue to involve human oversight, while lower-risk operational tasks could increasingly become fully autonomous.
As of today, Coupa says it operates about 20 active AI agents, up from six launched in May 2025, and expects that number to grow to 65 by early 2027.
Eliyahu said Tonkean would continue operating independently within Coupa’s structure. “Tonkean is staying Tonkean, but now with the greater leverage of the Coupa ecosystem,” he wrote. “Our mission stays the same. We will just have many, many more resources.”
