Coupa and MIT Data Science Lab collaborated to launch the Coupa + MIT Data Science Lab Business Spend Index (BSI) Report, 2026 Edition.
Built on Coupa’s foundational, community-generated $10 trillion dataset of actual business spend, the BSI is an economic indicator that leverages AI and proprietary data to better predict where business spend is heading.
"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," says 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," says David Simchi-Levi, the William Barton Rogers Professor and head of the MIT Data Science Lab.
Key takeaways:
· 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 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.
· All five tracked sectors registered month-over-month spend declines in April, 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.
· The BSI is predicting that procurement spend will contract in sectors of high tech, financial services, and healthcare and life sciences over the summer. Financial services is the sector forecasted to see the largest contraction.
· 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.
· 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 Feb. 20 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.
· 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.
