Planning Agent joins Vena’s growing taskforce of AI Agents, setting a new benchmark for AI in FP&A and reinforcing its position as the industry’s leading agentic-first FP&A platform

Finance teams spend thousands of hours each year managing the complexity of budgets, forecasts and data exports—costing them millions, until now. Vena, the only Complete FP&A platform powered by agentic AI and purpose-built to amplify the Microsoft technology ecosystem, today announced the expansion of its AI taskforce with the launch of its newest agentic AI solution for finance professionals: Vena Planning Agent. In closed beta, the Planning Agent has already cut budgeting cycles by over 60% for private preview customers and—earning global recognition—was named winner of the Highest Business Impact award at the 2025 Vista Equity Partners North America Agentic AI Hackathon. The Planning Agent continues Vena Copilot’s proven track record of providing industry-leading, agentic-first FP&A solutions designed to provide competitive advantage in this fluid economic environment.

Planning at the Speed of Business

Finance teams are still constrained by time-intensive processes, with a median annual planning cycle of 35 days and a median forecast cycle of 11 days. The need for faster, smarter and more adaptable planning tools is rapidly increasing, with an estimated $16.9 billion USD FP&A software market projection by 2030.

The Planning Agent, now in closed beta with select customers, was built to meet the demands of modern FP&A—helping finance leaders align strategy with execution, model scenarios and make faster, smarter decisions across the business. Using natural language, business unit stakeholders can run driver-based planning directly in the tools they already trust. Purpose-built for the Office of Finance, the Planning Agent works seamlessly across Excel, Power BI, Azure and Teams, reinforcing Vena’s position as the standard for human-centric innovation in the Microsoft ecosystem.

“We have grown Vena on a foundation of best-in-class, cutting-edge and AI-enhanced solutions for the office of finance. The Planning Agent is just our latest innovation that delivers the confidence to make bold, decisive moves that capitalize on the opportunities in economic volatility,” said Hugh Cumming, CTO of Vena. “It gives decision makers the ability to simulate outcomes, adjust strategies and act with confidence—without the weeks or months traditional planning requires.”

Key capabilities of Vena Planning Agent include:

• Driver-Based Planning for quick forecasts and budgets using historical trends and business-specific logic.
• Predictive Forecasting that blends historical data with macroeconomic signals to produce accurate, unbiased forecasts.
• Intelligent Scenario Modeling to instantly generate what-if scenarios, compare against baselines and evaluate business impact.

Award-Winning Innovation

The Planning Agent has already won its first award: Vista Equity’s Partners’ Highest Business Impact Award at its North America hackathon in July.

“This project represents the next frontier in business planning, combining AI autonomy with human strategic oversight,” added Andrew Stanbridge, VP of Product at Vena. “Winning the award validates the tangible value we’re delivering for customers and our disciplined, market-aligned roadmap.”

Building a Complete Agentic-First FP&A Platform

The Planning Agent joins Vena’s growing taskforce of AI agents—including the Analytics Agent and Reporting Agent—with the Vena Query Agent launching later this fall to reduce technical barriers to disseminating financial and operational insights generated in Vena across the business through natural language prompts for MQL scripting.

Together, these agents create a continuous loop of foresight, analysis and action. Finance teams can query live data, feed insights into plans and instantly test scenarios—removing friction from traditional FP&A workflows—while enterprise-grade security, governance, auditability and performance ensure organizations can scale AI confidently.

Vena Leads a New Era of FP&A: Where AI Agents and Finance Teams Plan the Future Together

These agents are a milestone marker for Vena, the most recognized agentic-first FP&A platform, first launched in May 2024. Alongside Vena Copilot—and with more agents coming in 2026—they bring finance into a new era of intelligent foresight, where AI and humans anticipate what’s next, uncover opportunities early and plan at the speed of business.

Discover Vena Copilot now at venasolutions.com.

About Vena

Vena is the only agentic AI-powered FP&A platform purpose-built to harness the full power of the Microsoft technology ecosystem for finance teams everywhere. Vena amplifies Microsoft's world-leading productivity tools, cloud technology and AI innovation to make FP&A, operational planning and adjacent strategic processes more flexible, efficient and intelligent. Thousands of the world’s leading companies rely on Vena to power their planning.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250915641232/en/

The Planning Agent is just our latest innovation that delivers the confidence to make bold, decisive moves that capitalize on the opportunities in economic volatility.