AI in Negotiations: What Will Change, What Won’t, and What CPO’s Must Prepare For

By GROUP CPO

As we all know Artificial Intelligence is no longer a future concept in procurement, we have already seen it reshape how we analyse spend, manage suppliers, and prepare for negotiations. As CPOs, the question now is how will AI influence negotiations: how far, how fast, and where human leadership remains critical.

Below is a view of what AI will change, what it won’t, and how procurement leaders should prepare.

What Will Change

1. Negotiation preparation will become better

AI will help transform pre-negotiation analysis. Scenario modeling, cost analysis, supplier risk profiling, and market benchmarking will be faster, deeper, and more accurate. AI can detect patterns people can miss i.e. pricing anomalies, behavioural tendencies, and leverage points. This provides teams with better readiness before they even enter the room.

2. Data driven leverage will increase

Negotiations will rely less on intuition and more on evidence. AI will help aggregate historical contracts, performance data, and market signals to support fact based discussions. This will shift procurement from “position-based” bargaining to more “insight-led” negotiations in the future.

3. Tactical negotiations will be automated

For low complexity, high volume categories, AI agents will increasingly support negotiations directly, adjusting price, volume, and delivery terms within predefined guardrails. This will free up procurement professionals to focus on strategic, high-impact negotiations.

What Won’t Change

1. Trust will still decide outcomes

No algorithm builds trust. Long term value in negotiations still depends on credibility, consistency, and relationships. Suppliers and companies make commitments to people, and confidence lies behind the partnership and the deal not to AI systems.

2. Judgment, ethics, and context remain human

Negotiations are rarely binary. Trade offs, cultural nuances, power dynamics, and ethical considerations require human judgment. Whilst AI can recommend, it is the procurement teams and leadership who must decide.

3. Strategic negotiation is still a leadership skill

The critical and strategic negotiation, involving innovation, risk sharing, resilience, or transformation, will always require executive presence, emotional intelligence, and strategic vision. AI cannot replace leadership and strategic decision making.

What CPO's Need To Prepare For

1. Redefining negotiation capability

Future negotiation excellence will sit at the intersection of commercial acumen, behavioural intelligence, and data literacy. CPOs need to upskill their teams to use AI tools, and also to challenge, interpret, and govern them.

2. Setting ethical and governance guardrails

AI driven negotiations raise some important questions: transparency, fairness, data usage, and bias. Procurement leaders will need to define clear principles for how AI is used with suppliers and how suppliers use AI with clients.

3. Shifting the role of procurement

As AI supports procurement more, procurement’s value will shift more towards strategy, influence, and orchestration. As such CPOs must reposition their function and teams from “negotiators of price” to “value creators.”

4. Leading the change, not reacting to it

AI adoption in negotiations is inevitable. CPOs need to sponsor pilots, encourage experimentation, and set expectations that AI is a capability to be mastered, not feared.

Final Thought

AI will make negotiations faster, smarter, and more analytical. But it will not make them more human. That remains our responsibility.

To succeed in this next era, CPOs need to embrace AI as a strategic enhancer, and double down on the uniquely human skills of judgment, trust, relationships and leadership. Whilst AI can help us shape the negotiation, procurement teams and leadership will still need to determine the outcome. If you are looking for procurement leaders driving progress with AI, contact Nita Arora-Parkes on info@groupcpo.com for more information