Aug 9 – Sep 8, 2026 · 6 items
The AI week, for a procurement manager
A real edition, written for: Procurement Manager
The one thing
Suppliers are bundling AI into base prices and quietly changing data-retention terms — both are renewal questions you should be raising now, not at signature.
Salesforce collapsed its sales and service packaging into three editions
Salesforce replaced its sales and service packaging with three new editions. Core, Advanced and Max now apply to Agentforce Sales, Service and Industries. Each tier bundles AI agents, Slack, embedded analytics, data security and the Premier Success Plan. Core lists at $195 per user per month and Advanced at $395. Max stays at $550, the same price as the earlier Agentforce 1 Edition. Existing Agentforce 1 customers can move to Max at no extra cost. Each tier carries a set allowance of Flex Credits for running agents. Industry edition pricing takes effect later in the fall. Pricing on legacy editions stays unchanged for current customers. Salesforce says Max editions will later include Headless 360 capacity.
Why it matters for you
Vendor repackaging resets your comparison baseline mid-contract. Any Salesforce quote you hold now maps to different bundles than the one it was written against.
- AI agents, Slack, analytics, security and support now arrive bundled rather than as separate line items
- Existing Agentforce 1 customers move across at no extra cost, which is a renewal lever worth naming
- Each tier carries a fixed agent-run allowance, so overage terms matter more than headline seat price
Try this
Ask your Salesforce account contact in writing what happens when the bundled agent allowance runs out.
Paste this into your AI tool
I manage procurement for a public body. A software vendor has replaced its old product packaging with three bundled editions, each including a fixed allowance of AI agent runs. Write me eight questions to send the account manager before I accept a quote. Focus on: what happens when the allowance is exhausted, how usage is measured and reported to us, whether allowance can be pooled or carried over, price protection at renewal, and exit terms. Keep each question one sentence, plain, and answerable with a number or a yes/no.
Asana is folding AI tools into existing plan tiers at no extra price
Asana will bundle a base level of AI tools into its work management plans from mid-September. The tools include AI Teammates and Dash, and tier prices do not change. The change applies to both new and existing customers. Asana will also recognise revenue from new AI Teammates sales as customers use their requests. CFO Aziz Megji said the shift creates a revenue headwind and pressure on gross margins in the second half. CEO Dan Rogers said AI products made up about a quarter of new recurring revenue last quarter, up from the prior quarter. Asana raised its full-year target for AI's share of new recurring revenue. It also signed its largest AI expansion deal, a three-year agreement with a Fortune 500 media company. Both executives spoke on an earnings call on Thursday.
Why it matters for you
A vendor bundling AI in at flat price is a data point you can use. It sets a comparison for suppliers still quoting AI as a separate line.
- The change applies to existing customers, not only new contracts, so it is a renewal question not a purchase one
- Their AI Teammates revenue now recognises on usage, a sign the market is drifting to consumption billing
- Consumption billing is harder for a public body to budget than a fixed seat price
Try this
List which of your current software suppliers charge AI as a separate line, and flag them for the next renewal.
Paste this into your AI tool
I run procurement for a public body. Here are software suppliers we currently contract with and roughly what we pay: [list suppliers and contract values]. For each, write two things: (1) a question I should ask at renewal about whether AI features are bundled into the base price or charged separately, and (2) what a fair answer would look like. Note where a supplier moving to usage-based AI billing would create budgeting risk for a public body that must commit to fixed annual spend. Output as a table.
Sources
GitHub Copilot moves to upfront seat billing and keeps chat data for the life of the account
GitHub is reopening Copilot Business and Enterprise signups for customers paying by card or PayPal from 1 September 2026, with seats charged upfront before users get access and existing card-paying customers moving to upfront billing from 1 October. Prices are unchanged. From 28 September, Copilot Chat on github.com and mobile merges with the cloud agent under one policy, and chat data will be kept for the life of the account rather than 28 days.
Why it matters for you
Two contract terms change here, and one is a data-retention change. Retention going from 28 days to indefinite is a supplier term your body will have to review.
- Chat data retention shifting to the life of the account is a data-protection question, not a pricing one
- Seats billed upfront before users get access changes your cash timing and your seat-count forecasting
- There is a settings decision an admin must make before 28 September, so the internal owner needs telling now
Try this
Ask whoever owns your GitHub Copilot contract whether the new retention terms were assessed against your data rules.
Paste this into your AI tool
I manage supplier contracts for a Swiss public body. A software supplier has changed its terms so that chat data is now retained for the life of the account instead of being deleted after 28 days. Draft a short email to our data protection contact asking for an assessment. Include: what specifically changed, what I need them to confirm, and what options I should ask the supplier for if the answer is no. Keep it under 200 words and neutral in tone.
Sources
A ransomware group used a coding assistant to help break into seven companies
Security firms Gambit Security and CloudSek reported that a Russian-speaking ransomware group called Aur0ra used the Cursor coding assistant to help break into a Belgian chemical maker and at least six other companies. The hackers got around the tool's safety refusals by claiming the intrusions were a test, and researchers found the evidence on a server the group left exposed. Reuters could not establish how much of each break-in the AI actually enabled.
Why it matters for you
Attackers talked a supplier's AI tool past its own refusals. That is a concrete question for your vendor security questionnaires.
- The tool's built-in refusals were bypassed by claiming the intrusion was a test, so "the model refuses harmful requests" is not an assurance
- Evidence came from a server the group left exposed, meaning victims did not detect it themselves
- Ask suppliers who embed AI agents what logging and human approval sits around them
Try this
Add two questions on AI agent safeguards and logging to your standard vendor security questionnaire.
Paste this into your AI tool
I run tenders for a public body and maintain our standard supplier security questionnaire. Write five new questions for suppliers whose products include AI agents that can act on systems, not just answer questions. Cover: what the agent is permitted to do without human approval, how actions are logged and made available to us, what happens if the agent's safety controls are bypassed, incident notification timelines, and whether our data is used for training. Each question one sentence, phrased so a vague answer is obvious.
Gartner: most organisations still cannot say what their AI spend bought
Gartner found that only 22% of large organisations have scaled AI across several business units. It surveyed more than 1,300 leaders at firms with over $50 million in revenue, between January and April. Spending plans are undented, with 85% of technology leaders raising AI budgets next year. About 11% of respondents could not say what they spent on AI in 2025. Gartner's Tina Nunno warned that weak measurement tied to business outcomes wastes resources. Firms that track returns continuously and shut down weak projects reported gains on 81% of initiatives. Popular uses such as cybersecurity, threat detection and IT service desk automation often return less. The best returns came from IT asset and cost optimisation, synthetic data generation, and automated code generation. Separate reports from Infosys and Deloitte found similar gaps in measurement and readiness.
Why it matters for you
You are being asked to evaluate AI suppliers against outcomes most buyers never measure. This gives you the argument for writing measurement into the contract.
- Organisations that tracked returns continuously and cut weak projects reported gains on the large majority of initiatives
- A share of respondents could not state their prior-year AI spend at all, which is a procurement failure not a technology one
- The strongest returns came from cost optimisation and code generation, not the customer-facing uses vendors lead with
Try this
Draft one measurable success criterion to attach to your next AI-related supplier contract.
Paste this into your AI tool
I contract suppliers for a public body. I want to attach measurable success criteria to an AI-related supplier contract so we can judge renewal on evidence. The service is: [describe what the supplier will do]. Propose four criteria. For each, give the metric, how it would be measured, who supplies the data, and what threshold would justify not renewing. Avoid anything that can only be measured by the supplier's own reporting. Keep it practical for a team without analysts.
Nvidia is buying Hugging Face, the main open-model hosting platform
NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the open model sharing platform. Chief executive Jensen Huang announced the deal on NVIDIA's blog. He put the price at just under $13 billion. NVIDIA says Hugging Face will stay open to the whole AI industry. Developers will keep their choice of models, frameworks, clouds and chips. NVIDIA compute will not be required to build or deploy through the platform. Hugging Face will continue to support open source and open weight models from all builders. NVIDIA says its infrastructure and engineering can improve reliability, safety, model evaluation and deployment. The Hugging Face team and its brand will remain. No closing date or regulatory timeline was given.
Why it matters for you
A supply-chain consolidation worth noting rather than acting on. Suppliers who told you their platform was vendor-neutral may need to re-answer that.
- The deal is not expected to close until the first half of 2027 and needs regulatory approval, so nothing changes for you now
- Nvidia says its compute will not be required, which is a commitment worth quoting back if it changes
- Analysts advise watching for later shifts rather than reacting, which matches a multi-year contract cycle
Try this
Note this in your supplier risk register under concentration risk, with a review date after the deal closes.
Sources
Build this
Every week, one small thing to build with AI in something you actually care about. No work in it. Five minutes to set up, and worth keeping if it earns a second run.
An evening-by-evening run through the boardgames already sitting in your cupboard, in an order that gets the unplayed ones actually played.
Five minutes to set up
Here are the boardgames I already own: [list them, including any still shrink-wrapped]. Here is who usually plays and how long we have: [e.g. four adults, two hours, weeknight]. Build a six-session plan using only these games — no recommendations to buy anything, no expansions, no substitutes. For each session name the game, why it fits that slot, and one rule or variant that will make it land better with this group. Put the least-played games early and say plainly which one of mine is not worth a slot and why.
- Have the actual shelf in front of you and list every box, including the ones never opened.
- Run it in ChatGPT and reject any answer that suggests buying something — reissue the constraint.
- Check its rule variants against the rulebook before the evening; it will invent plausible ones.
- When a session flops, tell it what went wrong and have it rebuild the remaining slots.
Yours arrives Thursday.
This one was written for a procurement manager. Tell us what you do and the next one is written for you — same news, your job, once a week.