Sagi Eliyahu

Founder and CEO @tonkean. Making a world of Makers. Entrepreneur, innovator and tech guy.

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

Wow! Humbling moment to be recognized by your homeland! Thank you @Israel 🇮🇱

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

Another Israeli AI company goes global 🇮🇱

American software giant Coupa is acquiring Israeli startup Tonkean in a deal reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tonkean helps companies use AI to handle everyday operations more efficiently - from internal approvals to workplace processes.
https://t.co/mOpZYoVRAh

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

Another Israeli AI company goes global 🇮🇱

American software giant Coupa is acquiring Israeli startup Tonkean in a deal reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tonkean helps companies use AI to handle everyday operations more efficiently - from internal approvals to workplace processes.
https://t.co/mOpZYoVRAh

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

@dropalltables @tonkean Thank you Kevin for the support all these years!!

[Joanne Chen @joannezchen]

https://t.co/9gWFeVLBMC

[Jeff Wang @jeffwsurf]

Huge congratulations to @tonkean for getting acquired by @Coupa

I was an early employee here and learned how to scale an org from only a few customers to many customers and am so happy for @esbsagi and team. I wouldn't be where I am today without that experience

https://t.co/UdPJxwVRc7

[Tonkean @tonkean]

We’re delighted to share that Tonkean is officially joining @Coupa 🚀

Today’s acquisition represents a massive step forward in our mission to transform enterprise work.

By combining Tonkean’s end-to-end orchestration capabilities with Coupa’s core source-to-pay platform—along with its Agentic Trade Network and Coupa Compose—we are delivering the full architecture needed for the autonomous enterprise.

Thank you to our incredible team, partners, and customers who got us here. Thank you to Coupa. We can’t wait to show the world what’s next.

Read the full announcement here: https://t.co/rR5HS2a4w8

And read more on today's milestone from Tonkean co-founder and CEO @esbsagi here: https://t.co/5e7MrRYq0D

#AgenticOrchestration #AIAgents

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

I’ll say it again - MCP/CLIs are not only nonsense; they are also dangerous. Without orchestration, AI is at best a bull in a china shop.

[JER @lifeof_jer]

https://t.co/ofucbVgkLV

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

@lifeof_jer I’ll say it again - MCP/CLI are not only nonsense; they are also dangerous. Without orchestration, AI is at best a bull in a china shop.

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

Unfortunately AI is not a solution when intelligence is not the bottleneck

[Tal Morgenstern @TalMorgenstern]

Israeli founders:
I see your pandemic, SVB and raise 10 hour time difference, 3 wars, mass protests, exchange rate and all your VPs on reserve duty. Bam.
Playing on hard mode 🇮🇱

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

Trust is where an orchestration layer becomes not only the control plane for scale, but the enabler to even kick off an AI transformation. Enterprise realities are very different than trends on X (outside the developers' world).

[Jaya Gupta @JayaGup10]

https://t.co/Vn0KVhQQg4

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

1000% spot on

[a16z @a16z]

Steven Sinofsky on why it's hard for AI to diffuse through firms:

"Algorithmic thinking is really, really, really hard for the vast majority of people who have jobs… If you were to go into any person and ask them to create a flow chart for a particular thing that they have to go do, they would probably fail at producing that flow chart."

"So within any organization, say doing a marketing plan… one person probably understands and could document the flow chart. So if you put one of these agents or this coworking tool in front of people… their ability to explain to it what to do is really, really limited."

"You're basically just developing the next abstraction layer for how people interact… at each level of the abstraction layer, [it's] been a highly skilled, very specific individual within an organization… and then the little parts they build become little toollets… and some people can stitch together and some can't."

@stevesi

[a16z @a16z]

Steven Sinofsky on why it's hard for AI to diffuse through firms:

"Algorithmic thinking is really, really, really hard for the vast majority of people who have jobs… If you were to go into any person and ask them to create a flow chart for a particular thing that they have to go do, they would probably fail at producing that flow chart."

"So within any organization, say doing a marketing plan… one person probably understands and could document the flow chart. So if you put one of these agents or this coworking tool in front of people… their ability to explain to it what to do is really, really limited."

"You're basically just developing the next abstraction layer for how people interact… at each level of the abstraction layer, [it's] been a highly skilled, very specific individual within an organization… and then the little parts they build become little toollets… and some people can stitch together and some can't."

@stevesi

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

All the talk is AGI, while real intelligence is nuanced (call it ANI)

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

A chat bar alone is essentially a CLI (which everyone would agree is a power tool for power users). A GUI and complex UX were designed to guide outcomes and prevent human errors (by enforcing policy) and to proactively push information, especially to non-power users.

The real magic is when you combine the simplicity of a chat bar with the power of an orchestration engine that can be proactive (that's what made OpenClaw so popular), but with rich user interfaces that are pulled in as needed.

[Rabi Shanker Guha @rabi_guha]

notice something?

Linear, PostHog, Attio - all shipped the same thing in the last few weeks. Homepage is a chat bar - not a dashboard.

This is the SaaS industry quietly admitting that traditional UI doesn't work anymore. Every user is different. One homepage can't serve them all.

The playbook is shifting:
→ expose your core APIs
→ connect an agentic layer
→ let users use software the way they want

SaaS became chat. Chat will become Generative UI - the agent won't just reply in text, it will compose the interface itself.

We're closer than people think.

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

And to avoid doubt, full service doesn’t equal plug and play / off the shelf like the old SaaS - it means premium fit to your need, white glove, meet you where you are, solve your needs from start to finish.

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

If they can afford it - People always prefer full service; not DIY (unless it’s a hobby). Cooking, driving, and doing laundry are a few simple examples.

Technology and the abundance of the marketplace and information already allow you to DIY all kinds of things you couldn’t before.

But you don’t. You only DIY if you can’t afford the full service (ie. think it’s too expensive) - for ex: you have a laundry machine (DIY tech), but you would love to have someone else do your laundry if you can afford it (Full Service).

The reality is - time is the only currency. And we only want to spend it on things that are productive or fun. The fact that you are capable of doing something doesn’t mean it’s worth your time doing it yourself.

So why would companies vibe code (DIY) away their SaaS vendors?

They won't.

If they are getting a full service at an affordable price, they won’t. But it must be full service, because DIY has become very cheap.

So, yes - AI is dramatically changing expectations for price and quality, but the fundamentals of free markets remain the same.

[Sagi Eliyahu @esbsagi]

Original thought is so so rare these days. Or I guess it always was, just becoming more obvious with all the AI slop and nonesense weekly trends…

[Tibo @tibo_maker]

there are genuinely 2 internets right now

1. where AGI is basically here, codebases write themselves, agents run entire workflows, and every founder is talking about their 10x productivity gains

2. where a real customer, paying real money, takes a photo of their laptop screen with their phone to share something

the hype wave we all live in makes it feel like everything has changed, and in some ways it has

but here's the thing nobody says out loud: roughly 85% of the world has never even opened ChatGPT - not even once

we're having a civilizational debate about superintelligence while most people are just trying to figure out basic software

both realities are true at the same time

the gap between them is just a lot wider than the timeline makes it seem