Elevate comes to Basel

Archlet Elevate made its way to Basel for the first time in March 2026, bringing together 50 procurement leaders from over 30 companies.

The evening centered on a clear theme: designing the AI-native procurement organization and understanding how people, technology, and decision-making evolve as AI agents take on more of the operational work.  

Tim Grunow, Co-Founder of Archlet, set the stage for how rapidly AI is advancing, while much of procurement still operates on fragmented tools, manual workflows, and legacy systems. The discussion highlighted a key shift: moving from human-heavy execution toward AI-assisted and increasingly autonomous sourcing processes.  

Through examples like Archlet’s Agentic AI, Spark, the audience saw how AI can remove hours of manual setup, accelerate sourcing cycles, and enable procurement teams to achieve more with fewer resources.  

Alina Heimgartner, VP Customer Success at Archlet, then shared insight into closing the AI adoption gap. While many organizations have started using AI, the depth and consistency of usage still vary widely.

She introduced a simple but powerful framework for driving adoption at scale: The “High Adoption Burger.” The idea is that successful transformation is not just about technology, but about how organizations enable change.

Basel's expert speakers

Huso Hasanović, Executive Director Digital Sourcing & Procurement at The Estée Lauder Companies, shared how procurement is evolving into an agent-driven ecosystem. Instead of navigating between systems, teams will increasingly rely on AI agents to orchestrate data, run scenarios, and suggest actions.

This shift places a new emphasis on people. Success depends on adoption, clear ownership, and the ability to connect business, technology, and data into one cohesive operating model.

Malik Akhtar, Chief Procurement Officer at Bayer Consumer Health, presented Bayer’s transformation journey through Dynamic Shared Ownership. His approach moves away from traditional top-down structures and gives teams more autonomy in day-to-day decisions.

With initiatives like Freedom to Spend Smartly, Bayer has reduced administrative effort while maintaining control through transparency and clear guardrails. The result is faster decision-making and a stronger sense of ownership across the organization.  

Pierre Laprée, Chief Product Officer at SpendHQ, closed the keynote sessions with a perspective on agentic procurement frameworks. He described a shift from process-driven models toward decision-centric systems, where AI does not just assist but actively surfaces opportunities.

A key takeaway was that the real differentiator is not the agent layer itself, but the data foundation behind it. Without structured and connected data, even the most advanced AI systems cannot deliver meaningful outcomes.  

Time to connect

Following the keynote sessions and panel discussion, participants continued the conversation over flying dinner and drinks at Memox Basel.

What’s next

The Elevate series continues to bring together a growing community of procurement leaders exploring how to design the AI-native procurement organization.

Archlet hosts events all over Europe and the US. To join the conversation and get the opportunity to connect with fellow leaders shaping the future of procurement, explore our upcoming events in a city near you here.