Zip Forward 2026: Zip Expands AI Risk Orchestration to Make Procurement the Enterprise’s First Line of Defense Against AI Vendor Risk

SAN FRANCISCO & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 16, 2026--

Zip, the AI platform for enterprise procurement, today expanded its AI Risk Orchestration offering into a full third-party risk management (TPRM) solution, covering supplier risk end-to-end within the platform where purchasing decisions are already made. The company unveiled the new AI capabilities at Zip Forward, its flagship conference, alongside a Sourcing and PO Superagent, expanded AI data partnerships, an app marketplace, and accrual accounting automation. Together, the launches advance Zip’s vision for AI-powered procurement: giving AI agents the context, connectivity, and controls to perform real enterprise work.

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Zip first introduced AI Risk Orchestration in April 2025 to bring vendor risk reviews directly into the purchasing workflow. Since then, the company has worked with enterprises including Mutual of Omaha, Stripe, Affirm, Rivian, Metro Bank, and Checkout.com to build out a dedicated solution that manages risk across the supplier lifecycle while preserving that core principle: risk should shape the purchasing decision, not sit in a separate process beside it. Since launching in 2025, AI Risk Orchestration customers have been able to achieve 85% faster cycle times, 98% portal completion rates, and 2x supplier risk coverage, while also cutting manual review work by up to 90%.

“Risk management has traditionally lived beside procurement, even though the purchasing process is where companies decide which vendors they’re willing to trust,” said Rujul Zaparde, co-founder and CEO of Zip. “We started by bringing risk into that decision. Now we’ve built the full, AI-powered, third-party risk management experience around it, so companies can move faster without separating risk from the work itself.”

Using AI to orchestrate risk reviews to manage third-party risk

As enterprises adopt more vendors – particularly AI providers handling sensitive data and business-critical workflows – third-party risk has become harder to manage through disconnected questionnaires, inboxes, and point solutions. Security, legal, compliance, finance, and procurement teams often assess the same vendor independently, creating duplicate work and fragmented decision trails. Reviews can become bottlenecks or get bypassed entirely when business teams are under pressure to move quickly. That’s where much of the risk comes in.

AI Risk Orchestration brings these activities into one connected process by triaging incoming requests, determining when an assessment is needed, and pre-filling questionnaires using the supplier information already in Zip. From there, it scores suppliers against the company’s own risk methodology and surfaces findings from survey responses, documents, and other sources. Each finding is tracked to resolution, whether that means accepting the risk or requesting additional evidence from the supplier, all before the purchase is approved. Reassessments run automatically on the cadence the company’s policy defines, and continuous monitoring alerts the right team members when critical risk factors change so they can act.

The expanded AI solution gives enterprises a more consistent way to assess, monitor, and manage vendor risk without separating risk management from procurement. For AI vendors in particular, companies can evaluate emerging concerns around data privacy, security, model access, and the handling of sensitive company information before commitments are made.

“Zip’s AI Risk Orchestration, in combination with its agents, has changed how we do vendor management,” said Kate Hiykel, Mutual of Omaha’s Manager of the Vendor Management Program. “With the automated scoring, we are able to consistently apply our framework and methodology to all vendor reviews, both at intake and monitoring, which is something we haven’t been able to get ‘just right’ before. We are beyond excited to continue this maturation with the next iteration of AI Risk Orchestration and Zip’s Superagents.”

Zip also announced five additional major capabilities at Zip Forward:

About Zip

Zip is the leading AI platform for enterprise procurement. Through one platform, Zip unifies how companies purchase – replacing fragmented tools and manual processes with intelligent orchestration and governed AI agents that procurement teams and employees actually want to use. Zip is the only procurement orchestration platform with full intake-to-pay capabilities and the most widely deployed, fully governed AI agents in enterprise procurement. Zip has delivered billions in customer savings and powers modern procurement for hundreds of global enterprises, including Anthropic, AMD, Discover, Dollar Tree, OpenAI, T-Mobile, and more. To learn more, visit zip.com.

Included as part of Zip’s Procure-to-Pay solution, accrual automation uses purchasing and spend data already in Zip to calculate accruals through a deterministic, reproducible engine. AI gathers missing estimates and reduces manual follow-up, while accountants retain full traceability into each calculation and final control over what gets posted. It supports PO-backed spend, virtual card spend, and recurring non-PO costs in one place.

Zip’s new app marketplace makes it easier for procurement and IT teams to connect Zip to the systems their business relies on. Teams can discover Zip's integrations and install integration templates through a self-service experience, with simple one-click upgrades to stay current as new integration features become available. It streamlines procurement workflows and expands the enterprise context available to AI agents.

Since launching in 2025, AI Risk Orchestration customers — including companies like Mutual of Omaha, Stripe, Affirm, Rivian, Metro Bank, and Checkout.com — have been able to achieve 85% faster cycle times, 98% portal completion rates, and 2x supplier risk coverage, while also cutting manual review work by up to 90%.

Zip Forward 2026: Zip Expands AI Risk Orchestration to Make Procurement the Enterprise’s First Line of Defense Against AI Vendor Risk

HOUSTON (AP) — The mayor of Houston on Friday said the city would limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, heralding “a new model” of immigration enforcement after Democrats won power in Texas for the first time in decades.

Mayor John Whitmire said the city would go after immigrants “that pose a danger, not those that are going about their family business, work and education.”

A traffic incident "will not even ... you write a citation or you warn them and they go about their way. No contact with (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) over nonviolent, non-jailable offenses. It reduces the fear and anxiety.”

Details of the change were to be spelled out in an executive order, but the move by the nation’s fourth-largest city is one of the first steps to curb ICE’s powers since Tuesday’s election.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Houston has sparked protests after an ICE officer fatally shot a Mexican homebuilder this summer and another struck a man with a car.

A grand jury last week indicted ICE officer Mario Alberto Morales on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors say Morales intentionally rammed his car into Miguel Parra Hernandez, whose leg was broken. ICE has asserted that Parra Hernandez ran in front of the vehicle, an account that prosecutors say is contradicted by video.

Despite a one-time $75 billion infusion from Congress, ICE remains heavily dependent on local police to find people subject to deportation and turn them over. It has done so partly by signing about 2,600 agreements — many in Texas — to deputize local police and other state and local agencies to enforce immigration laws. Texas has been a primary target for ICE arrests.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has closely aligned the state with the Trump administration to collaborate on enforcing federal immigration laws. He lost his bid for a fourth term to Democrat Gina Hinojosa.

This undated photo released by Harris County Sheriff's Office shows Mario Alberto Morales. (Harris County Sheriff's Office via AP)

FILE - A woman holds a sign reading "ICE OUT OF HOUSTON" during a vigil for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national fatally shot by a federal immigration agent a day prior, Wednesday, July 8, 2026, in Houston. (AP Photo/Mark Felix, file)