Zip, a startup with a cloud-based procurement platform of the same name, today announced that it has secured $100 million in new funding.

The Series C round included contributions from Y Combinator, CRV and Tiger Global. It values Zip at $1.5 billion. That’s up from the $1.2 billion valuation the startup received last May following a $43 million Series B round.

Zip, incorporated as Greenbax Inc., provides a cloud platform that helps companies purchase goods and services from suppliers. In the enterprise, large purchases can involve a significant number of steps. Zip says its platform streamlines the process to help procurement teams operate more efficiently.

The platform enables workers to request new purchases through a form-based interface. A user can specify what new product or service is required, as well as input related details such as which suppliers will be involved in the transaction. From there, the platform routes the purchase request to the relevant executive for approval.

Important transactions often have to be signed off by not one but several executives. According to Zip, its platform provides the ability to create automated workflows for requesting purchase approvals. Users can create such workflows through a low-code interface that doesn’t require programming expertise. 

Zip stores data about a company’s supplier contracts in a centralized repository for easy access. When the platform detects that a contract is about to expire, it can automatically notify members of the procurement team. 

Users also have access to an analytics dashboard that visualizes the supplier data stored in Zip’s platform. According to the company, its analytics features simplify the task of tracking a company’s business expenses. The platform can also be used to identify ways of making a company’s procurement workflow more efficient. 

Zip announced its $100 million funding round today in conjunction with a new edition of its platform. The offering includes additional features not included in the standard edition, including tools that speed up the task of paying suppliers. Another new tool promises to automate the creation of purchase orders, the documents in which a company specifies what items it plans to buy from a supplier and at what price.

“In a space that is notorious for providing tools that cause confusion, lack of adoption and costly deployment errors, we’ve built a holistic, consumer-style and enterprise-grade Intake-to-Pay platform,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Rujul Zaparde. 

The startup says its platform is used by hundreds of companies, including Snowflake Inc., Databricks Inc. and other major tech firms. Zip will use the proceeds from its new funding round to further expand its installed base. Additionally, it’s seeking to expand product adoption among workers at companies that are already customers.

As part of the effort, the company plans to roll out new generative artificial intelligence features to improve user productivity. Zip will also hire more employees and open an office in Dallas to support its growth initiatives. Over the past year, it has more than quadrupled its headcount, to 250 employees.

Image: Zip