Coupa and MIT Data Science Lab Collaborate to Launch the Business Spend Index (BSI) Report, Providing AI-Driven, Predictive Insights on the Future of Business Spend

Built on a $10 trillion dataset of actual B2B transactions, this industry-first, data-driven predictive indicator forecasts business spend shifts to help leaders navigate global trade dynamics. 

FOSTER CITY, Calif., June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Coupa, the leading platform for autonomous spend management, today announced the launch of the Coupa + MIT Data Science Lab Business Spend Index Report, 2026 Edition. Built on Coupa's foundational, community-generated $10 trillion dataset of actual business spend, the BSI is an innovative economic indicator that leverages AI and proprietary data to better predict where business spend is heading.

Through their unique collaboration, Coupa and MIT Data Science Lab sought to measure the true direction and strength of business spending by capturing market-driven dynamics as they happen. Traditional economic indicators, such as real GDP, are frequently revised, making them difficult to use for decision-making. By capturing the collective data of millions of procurement transactions and turning it into actionable intelligence, the BSI captures macroeconomic shifts in near real-time without re-estimation and generates forward-looking economic forecasts of business spend up to 90 days ahead.

The BSI tracked real capital deployment from within the broader Coupa community network of more than 10 million buyers and suppliers, providing leaders with actionable spend data to navigate current global trade dynamics. In doing so, it successfully detected a major economic turning point in manufacturing three months before the ISM PMI registered it.

Unlike traditional indicators that rely on backwards-looking sentiment surveys, the BSI analyzes committed spend transactions drawn from Coupa's unique, proprietary dataset. Operating on the principle that action precedes perception, the index bypasses subjective executive opinions to capture genuine market-driven spending dynamics. This ensures the BSI delivers precise, noise-free economic reads based on actual B2B purchasing behavior rather than how business leaders feel about the market.

"With visibility into trillions of dollars of actual business spend, you don't guess where the economy is going, you see it unfolding in real-time," said Kevin Iaquinto, Coupa's Chief Marketing Officer. "By leveraging Coupa's unmatched proprietary dataset and combining it with the best macroeconomic indicators and AI, MIT Data Science Lab and Coupa have collaborated to deliver a report that has tremendous business value for procurement, supply chain, and other business leaders who are debating and actioning future spend decisions."

"Coupa has a very unique dataset that offers the basis for incredible economic insights. By applying rigorous econometric modeling and statistical analysis, we have mathematically observed that Coupa's data has strong leading signals relative to numerous established macroeconomic indicators, such as FRED, IDEA, ISM PMI, and Real GDP," said David Simchi-Levi, the William Barton Rogers Professor and head of the MIT Data Science Lab (retired).

A Few Key BSI Findings:

• BSI Catches April Spend Pullback Before Surveys: All five tracked sectors registered month-over-month spend declines in April 2026, from −0.8% in Manufacturing to −3.3% in Business Services. In comparison, ISM PMI's Manufacturing & Services surveys predicted the industry would expand in April.
  
  
• Sector Contractions Predicted Over the Summer: The BSI is predicting that procurement spend will contract in sectors of High Tech, Financial Services, and Healthcare & Life Sciences over the summer. Financial Services is the sector forecasted to see the largest contraction.
  
  
• Tech's Bet on AI is Yielding Enterprise Demand: High Technology procurement spend has climbed more than 40% since mid-2024 to a four-year cycle high. Tracking enterprise software and services procurement, the BSI provided a definitive early signal that enterprise demand is catching up to the massive AI infrastructure build-out commitments made.
  
  
• From Tariff Shock to AI Investment: Smaller U.S. manufacturing firms were forced to slash spend by 17.5% to survive 2025 tariff volatility, compared to just 14.6% for larger manufacturing firms. The February 20, 2026 Supreme Court tariff ruling introduced a significant source of policy stabilization, allowing businesses to shift away from short-term defensive maneuvers and return to long-term strategic investments in automation and AI-enabled execution systems.
  
  
• Manufacturing Invests in Resilience Despite Soft Demand: Typically, manufacturing spend only rises to meet surging customer orders. However, the BSI showed that late 2025 manufacturing spend surged even though new customer demand remained soft. Spurred by full expensing provisions in the July 2025 "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBBA), manufacturers are taking advantage of tax breaks to make bold internal investments in automation, capability, and supply chain resilience.

Detailed insights from the BSI provide answers to the questions that leaders are asking. Looking ahead, the BSI can inform decision making with an inference of how tariff, geopolitics, trade, and economic factors will impact supply, pricing, and demand.

Download the BSI Report here.

Report Methodology
The Coupa and MIT Data Science Lab Business Spend Index Report 2026 Edition applies data science, seasonal adjustment, and machine learning to an anonymized subset of $877.9 billion in 2025 procurement spend, representing 1,487 Coupa customers across High Technology, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Business Services, and Healthcare & Life Sciences.

About Coupa
Coupa is the leading platform for autonomous spend management. Celebrating its 20 year anniversary, Coupa uses its trusted, community-generated, $10 trillion dataset to bring evidence-based intelligence and autonomous AI agents to a network of 10M+ buyers and suppliers on a unified platform. Coupa seamlessly automates the purchasing and transaction process for buyers and suppliers alike, powering the #1 business trade network. With Coupa, you'll make margins multiply™.

Learn more at coupa.com and follow us on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).

SOURCE Coupa Software