NPI, the leading provider of data-driven IT procurement intelligence and advisory solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with Zip that will bring NPI’s IT price benchmarking intelligence directly into Zip’s AI procurement orchestration platform.
Officially announced last week at Zip Forward 2026 in New York, the partnership makes NPI a launch member of Zip’s new AI Data Partner ecosystem – and the chosen AI Data Partner for large enterprise IT deal benchmarking. This ecosystem gives Zip Superagents access to specialized external data and intelligence to improve purchasing decisions. The ecosystem is designed to bring third-party insights directly into the workflow where decisions are being made, eliminating the need for procurement teams to move between separate systems and portals.
At the center of the NPI partnership is Price Pulse, a new autonomous benchmarking capability. Through an MCP-based connection, Zip’s Procurement Superagent will be able to call NPI’s benchmarking intelligence from within a Zip workflow and return relevant pricing insights in real time. It marks the first time NPI will offer fully autonomous, system-to-system benchmarking without requiring an analyst to produce a curated report.
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“Procurement AI is only as good as the intelligence behind the decisions it makes,” said Jon Winsett, CEO of NPI. “That’s what makes this partnership so exciting. We’re putting NPI’s enterprise pricing intelligence directly into the Zip workflow at the exact moment a purchasing decision is being made. It gives procurement teams a faster way to answer one of the most important questions in any negotiation: Are we getting a fair deal?”
Zip’s Superagents are designed to perform procurement work while operating within enterprise policies, permissions and audit controls. The Procurement Superagent can manage complex activities such as stalled requests, repetitive follow-up and tail-spend negotiation. NPI’s data will add independent price benchmarking context to those workflows, helping the agent assess pricing rather than acting without external market intelligence.
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The partnership is particularly relevant for large enterprises. NPI and Zip already share nearly 60 customers, with Zip lauding NPI’s depth of benchmarking data as particularly well suited to its growing base of large strategic and Fortune 500 customers.
“Enterprise procurement decisions require enterprise-grade intelligence,” said Michael Denari, AI General Manager at Zip. “NPI brings exceptional depth in the complex, high-value categories that matter most to our largest customers. By putting that intelligence directly into the Zip platform, we’re giving procurement teams stronger market context without asking them to leave the workflow.”
