Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Stan Garber, co-founder and President of Levelpath
Picture a manager within a large company who needs a security tool. Their request is submitted, routed, clarified and eventually converted into a sourcing event. Documents move between inboxes where approvals slow down progress, and negotiations stretch across weeks, possibly months. This process is thorough, but the pace and its prioritization is dependent on human bandwidth.
Now imagine the same process in 2026. The manager enters a request, but this time an AI agent immediately reviews usage patterns and governance, identifies qualified suppliers, evaluates risk and pricing, then drafts negotiation language that is aligned with policy. Along the operational journey, the key stakeholders are notified of the project’s status and once the project is complete, the team reviews and approves it.
This is the beginning of an agent-led economy inside the enterprise. One in which AI is no longer waiting for instructions and is instead carrying work forward. Analysts describe this shift as “agentic AI,” where software is capable of completing work from start to finish. The following predictions describe how this transformation will unfold and why procurement, IT, security and cloud operations will feel the impact first.
The following five predictions outline how AI agents will reshape enterprise buying in 2026, from execution and oversight to measurement and governance.
Prediction 1: Procurement will become the first fully agent-driven enterprise workflow.
Procurement is structured, repeatable and relies on data, all qualities that make it ideal for agentic workflows. How will agent-driven enterprise workflow look? Teams will teach agents how to interpret sourcing rules, apply thresholds, follow category policies and evaluate suppliers. Agents will then manage the execution, providing consistency that is difficult to achieve through manual effort alone.
As agents take on execution, sourcing timelines compress naturally. Work that used to require weeks of coordination, such as comparing suppliers, analyzing spend data, drafting negotiation points and preparing sourcing packages, can be completed the day a request is initiated.
In this new system, procurement professionals will transition from running processes to designing them. This will allow them to focus more on strategy, supplier relationships and planning while agents handle more transactional activities. By the end of 2026, this is likely to be commonplace.
Prediction 2: The CPO will gain strategic influence + procurement becomes a competitive advantage
As procurement becomes automated, the role of Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) will expand. When agents automate contracting, renewals and supplier comparisons, the CPO has more time and clearer insight into enterprise spend.
This visibility improves collaboration with finance, while supplier risk and operational data become more accessible to IT and security teams. Procurement moves from supporting decisions after the fact to shaping them as they are made.
Organizations that adopt this model early will begin to see compounding benefits. Faster sourcing cycles, more predictable spend and tighter policy enforcement translate into operational advantages that are difficult to replicate.
The result is a CPO who sits alongside CIOs and CISOs as a peer in strategic planning, both supporting and influencing operations.
Prediction 3: Cloud and IT Buying Becomes Predictive and Self-Optimizing
Modern IT environments are constantly evolving, which creates ideal conditions for agentic automation. Agents can monitor usage patterns, license allocation, renewal timing and consumption trends across cloud and SaaS systems. Based on this data, they can then make adjustments based on real-time demand in order to reduce unused capacity and negotiate improved terms when opportunities arise.
As purchasing becomes even more proactive, the benefits for IT organizations include reduced waste, improved agility and time savings. Surprise overages and missed renewal deadlines become less common.
Prediction 4: Measuring AI Success Through Autonomy
Early AI pilots delivered productivity gains, but they rarely transformed core workflows. The next wave of AI will focus on planning, reasoning and execution. This evolution will change the way enterprises evaluate success, and productivity alone will no longer be sufficient. Leaders will measure the percentage of workflow that an agent can complete independently while following policy and applying context. Autonomy will become a key metric, meaning that the more of a process and agent can complete safely, the greater the benefit to business performance.
As agents take on more responsibility, enterprises will develop governance frameworks that look like financial controls. These frameworks will include approval thresholds, separation of duties, audit logs and clear rules for exceptions.
Strong governance will make it possible to scale agent adoption across categories and departments. Leaders will then develop more confidence in the process when they experience agent behavior as transparent, consistent and aligned with policy. Once governance is in place, expansion becomes safe and predictable.
Prediction 5: We Have Agents for That
“We have agents for that,” will become a common phrase and reflect a new model for how work moves through an organization. Procurement will evolve into a strategic function as IT and security become more predictive and proactive.
Levelpath is moving toward this future by building AI Agents that support fast, accurate and policy-aligned buying across the enterprise. Companies that invest in agent-led workflows will see measurable gains in cost, risk posture and time to value across their supplier ecosystem.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stan Garber serves as co-founder and President of Levelpath, an AI-native procurement platform. As a serial entrepreneur, he has successfully built and scaled multiple startups. Most notably, Stan co-founded and led Scout RFP as President, a widely adopted procurement solution that Workday (WDAY) acquired in 2019. Earlier in his career, he co-founded ONOSYS, a restaurant-focused digital payments platform that was acquired by LivingSocial (GRPN).
Stan holds a Finance degree from Case Western Reserve University and brings a distinctive combination of strategic vision and entrepreneurial drive to his leadership at Levelpath.
