Omnea, an end-to-end, AI-powered procurement, and supplier management platform, has secured $20 million in Series A funding. Accel (which recently invested in Lightdash, Zepz, and Raycast) led the round, with participation from existing investors First Round Capital and Point Nine.
The round also saw contributions from angel investors David Clarke (former CTO of Workday), Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe), and Anne Raimondi (COO of Asana).
How will it use the investment?
The funding will be used to triple its headcount by the end of 2025, investing in both the R&D and GTM teams as well as opening US offices. Alongside the funding, the company has expanded AI capabilities that further improve the employee experience of the procurement process. The company is also rolling out a new suite of advanced third-party risk management features, so supplier risk can be automatically and continually assessed throughout the full supplier lifecycle.
The funding follows a year of growth for the company, with its revenue growing eightfold and impressive customer feedback on the platform’s user experience and business impact.
Sonali De Rycker, Partner at Accel, said: “Business customers today are frustrated with traditional procurement software. Products are clunky and disjointed, generating numerous inefficiencies and unnecessary fees. We believe Omnea’s approach to procurement automation and orchestration is compelling and has the potential to redefine this multi-billion dollar category. It’s also exciting to partner once again with Ben, having gotten to know him and a number of the team well as a result of our early investment in Tessian. Having already attracted some of the UK’s most ambitious early-stage operators, we’re looking forward to seeing the Omnea team’s continued growth.”
How was the idea born?
Currently, most businesses find the procurement experience extremely complex and difficult as it has become increasingly decentralised, with legal, security, finance, ESG, and governance considerations to factor into every purchase. It nearly takes an average of six months and the involvement of upwards of 11 stakeholders for a tool to move from identification to final purchase. This delay often pushes exasperated employees to disregard the procurement process, resulting in unnecessary supplier risk and shadow IT.
Omnea was founded in 2022 by Ben Freeman and Ben Allen in London to fix this frustrating and broken process with a scalable and easy-to-use procurement platform. Having experienced the challenges surrounding today’s procurement processes in his former role as US GM and Head of International Growth at cybersecurity leader Tessian, Freeman set out to change it. He identified that in a world demanding greater capital efficiency and more emphasis on risk and compliance, companies would need to overhaul their existing procurement processes and the antiquated systems they currently rely on.
The leadership team consists of proven operators including Freeman’s former Tessian colleagues Sabrina Castiglione as CFO (formerly CFO of Tessian, COO of Pento) and Abhirukt Sapru as CCO (former CRO of Tessian).
Simplifies procurement experience
The company is claimed to be a one-of-its-kind platform that holistically manages and automates a company’s full supplier lifecycle across both spending and risk management. Its platform increases the strength of a company’s spending controls by automating procurement processes through its no-code workflows.
In addition, the London startup ensures the process is easy to follow, meaning everyone involved, whether the requestor, legal, finance, information security, or IT teams, gets a custom experience and only has visibility of the information they need to review. This saves them time and money while preventing information security and compliance headaches.
Ben Freeman, co-founder and CEO of Omnea, said: “Procurement is fundamentally broken, making it one of the least-loved processes in businesses today. Finance and procurement leaders are fed up with seeing duplicative suppliers, missed renewals, and manually managed procurement processes. Omnea is meeting a critical need for companies of all sizes to get full control over their suppliers – not just in terms of spend, but also through the lens of information security and governance. We’ve seen significant early demand, and with our new AI capabilities and third-party risk management offering, we’re the only company in the space truly automating the full supplier lifecycle. We’re delighted to announce today’s funding so we can continue on our mission to take the pain out of procurement and supplier management once and for all.”
Client base
With clients across Europe, North America, and APAC, Omnea already counts numerous industry leaders like AlphaSights, McAfee, Onfido, and TeamViewer as customers.
Alex Pilsl, Chief Procurement Officer at Teamviewer said: “Omnea has transformed how we manage procurement. We now have an intuitive front door for all spend requests, the right people are automatically involved at the right time, and their orchestration layer connects all of our existing systems making the entire process seamless. The outcome is phenomenal.”
Nick Priest, Global Head of Procurement at McAfee added: “Omnea’s UI/UX is best-in-market, and we evaluated plenty of systems out there. This is vital to drive maximum buy-in of Procurement as a strategic business partner in any organisation.”
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