Ausgrid pilots KymChat AI-guided procurement with KPMG and Microsoft

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Ausgrid pilots KymChat AI-guided procurement with KPMG and Microsoft

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Ausgrid, Australia's largest energy network on the east coast serving more than four million customers across New South Wales, partnered with KPMG and Microsoft to pilot an AI-enabled guided-buying accelerator named KymChat — built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI — within its procurement function. The pilot ingests Ausgrid's own procurement policies, processes and rules into KymChat so the team can make faster, compliant buying decisions while reducing manual workload, and Ausgrid reports fewer errors, improved efficiency and stronger user feedback during the test phase. The energy network needed its procurement team to work faster, remain compliant and manage growing operational pressures without growing headcount. KPMG's KymChat accelerator was selected because it could be tuned to Ausgrid's existing policies and governance controls rather than imposing a generic procurement workflow, and because the cloud-native design allows for rapid set-up even at a utility scale. Operationally, the pilot focuses on guided, compliant decision making: the KymChat interface lets Ausgrid procurement staff query the chatbot about what they can and cannot buy under current policy, while the underlying Azure OpenAI models are constrained to draw only on Ausgrid's approved policy corpus. This keeps the AI's recommendations aligned with the organisation's existing governance controls and reduces the risk of off-policy purchases. KymChat's plug-in style deployment on Azure OpenAI lets the project scale across teams once the pilot concludes. KPMG's Accelerator team continues to support tuning and integration; deployment timelines vary based on integration complexity and customisation needs, but the cloud-native design allows for rapid set-up. The pilot is positioned as a stepping stone toward broader AI-enabled procurement transformation across Ausgrid's operations and supply-chain function. Ausgrid, headquartered in Sydney, serves customers across New South Wales with one of the largest electricity distribution networks in Australia. Source: KPMG Australia, 2026.