We’re excited to share that our portfolio company Tonkean, which builds AI agents for G&A teams, is joining Coupa, the AI platform for total spend management. Tonkean and Coupa have been long-time partners, and we can’t wait to see what they build together next.
We first led Tonkean’s seed round in 2019, and it's been a privilege to build alongside Sagi Eliyahu, Offir Talmor, and the rest of the Tonkean team in the years since. Congratulations as well to Coupa, which is gaining an exceptional team, powerful product, and enterprise customers.
Going from 0 to 1 together
At Foundation, we work alongside founders from the earliest stage, helping them grow from 0 to 1. Tonkean shows what that partnership can produce, when our strengths meet a founder's own.
When I first met Sagi Eliyahu in 2018, I could immediately tell he had incredible grit. Sagi never went to college, served in Unit 8200, and became the youngest VP of Engineering at Jive Software.
While we passed on his first idea, we loved him as a founder. He was a rare combination: an exceptional product thinker and engineering leader in one. When I called his references, they all told me the same thing: don’t bet against Sagi. He’s relentless, resilient, and he’ll always find a way.
Our work together started pre-revenue. After we turned down his initial idea, Sagi and I kept in touch. Over the coming months, we brainstormed together until we agreed on an adjacent product direction, and Foundation led Tonkean’s seed round in 2019. We introduced Tonkean to several of its first key hires; Sagi closed them and was able to attract some incredible people to his team. We connected Tonkean to advisors who introduced the first big customers; Sagi landed the contracts, and then delivered.
AI software that does the work
We’ve long believed that AI will transform software from a tool to a worker through systems of agents.
Within G&A, procurement is a case in point. Every new vendor request kicks off a chain of intake forms, approvals, security reviews, and contract negotiations. The work bounces across email, Slack, and ERP systems. Tonkean streamlines this with agentic orchestration. The platform enables operations teams to architect organization-wide processes. It provides a connective agentic layer between all of a company’s existing tools, synchronizing data and automating approvals without replacing existing tools.
Tonkean’s ability to continuously adapt and integrate new AI technologies into real-world, legacy workflows has been one of its competitive advantages.
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Building the context graph for G&A
We’ve already seen how Tonkean has transformed how G&A teams work: cutting procurement timelines in half, replacing manual input with automation, streamlining workflows across continents, and saving organizations both time and money.
When Tonkean is combined with Coupa, we’re excited to see systems of agents become even more embedded within procurement, supply chain, finance, and IT workflows. Over time, this has the potential to build the context graph for G&A, which is one part of what we believe will be AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity. With Sagi’s grit, the future looks bright.
Congratulations again to Coupa, Sagi, Offir, and the entire Tonkean team!