Harnessing AI to Build More Resilient Supply Chains and Communities
Harnessing AI to Build More Resilient Supply Chains and Communities
August 8, 2025 | Elizabeth Brown
At Building Markets, we know that strong economies start with strong small businesses. For nearly two decades, we’ve worked to close the gap between high-potential entrepreneurs and the buyers and capital providers who can help them grow. We’ve done that by building trust, verifying suppliers, and enabling more inclusive sourcing from businesses that are often overlooked. Now, we’re scaling that mission through technology—using artificial intelligence (AI) to power the next generation of sourcing.
We’re developing an AI-driven matchmaking tool to help buyers discover new, trusted suppliers. It’s designed to solve one of procurement’s most persistent challenges: discovery. Many organizations want to diversify their supply chains, but finding, vetting, and building relationships with new vendors can be slow, opaque, and resource-intensive. As a result, procurement decisions often default to the familiar.
This tool changes that. It surfaces credible, under-the-radar businesses, improves match quality, and significantly reduces the time and cost of sourcing. And it draws on everything we’ve learned over the years: how to identify strong SMEs, how to build trust, and how to create economic opportunity through better connections.
We’re not building just for the sake of innovation. We’re building tools that reflect our values, solve real problems, and help scale our impact from thousands to millions. And that impact is measurable. To date, Building Markets has helped over 78,000 small businesses secure more than $1.4 billion in supply chain revenue. Over the past 10 years, our programs have yielded an 8x return on investment.
We’ve seen firsthand how shifting just a small portion of procurement spending toward small businesses can create jobs, circulate income locally, and stabilize communities. And yet, despite their outsized importance, SMEs remain deeply underleveraged. Globally, they make up nine out of ten businesses and are the largest employers worldwide, yet only 3% of development aid is directed toward helping them grow. Among private foundations in the U.S. and Europe, fewer than two dozen prioritize SME development. But the solution isn’t just more aid—it’s better market access.
There’s a tendency to treat SME growth as only a policy or financing challenge, something for governments or development banks to solve. But the reality is that markets themselves need to function differently. Only 1% of global procurement dollars reach women-led businesses. That’s not just a regulatory failure, it’s a systems failure rooted in visibility, access, and trust. Solving that requires tools that make it easier for buyers to discover and confidently source from a wider, more diverse pool of suppliers. It’s exactly the kind of challenge the private sector is well-positioned to address with technology that reduces friction and makes inclusive sourcing a competitive advantage.
We’re proud to partner with the Nareit Foundation and the The Nasdaq Entrepreneural Center, who are providing early support and partnership to leverage AI-powered tools to strengthen REIT supply chains. We’re also excited to work with the GitLab Foundation to test the tool in Colombia and study how AI can improve access to markets and wellbeing for workers and business owners alike.
There’s still more to learn, and we’re committed to building this thoughtfully with the right data, the right partners, and a clear view of the systemic change we’re trying to drive.
If you’re a buyer looking to expand your supplier network, a funder or technology companuy interested in economic resilience, or someone who believes technology should serve people first, we’d love to hear from you. The time to build more resilient markets and communities is now. Let’s not wait to act.
