Negotiations are central to reach consensus between supply chain partners while, simultaneously, meeting internal cost and quality targets. Purchasing prices can be improved by inducing competition in the supply base. In this context, the application of mechanism design theory in negotiations gained enhanced attention. While such approaches can result in high cost reductions, mechanism design-based negotiations are very complex. The paper aims at answering the question whether artificial intelligence (AI) can facilitate the execution of mechanism design-based negotiations. To this end, a World Café has been conducted at an automotive original equipment manufacturer. A group of 20 experts from the fields of purchasing and AI discussed the potentials of AI for the purchasing function. The results indicate that the application of AI can indeed facilitate the execution of mechanism design-based negotiations and help overcoming bounded rationality problems. Even more, AI might be a game changer for the purchasing function. Introduction: Could Artificial Intelligence Support the Design and Execution of Complex Negotiations? Artificial intelligence (AI) is considered to be one of the pacemaker technologies of the 4 th industrial revolution (Monostori 2014). With AI's promise to simulate human-like behavior (Russell and Norvig 2010), it could conceptionally be imagined to support complex problems like negotiations. Given the importance of business-to-business negotiations, previous research has focused on various influencing factors in the negotiation process as well as their outcomes. However, literature concentrating on how negotiations are executed remains scarce (Geiger 2017). Recent studies have tried to take up on this gap by addressing buying organizations' application of mechanism design theory in negotiations (e.g Huang et al. 2013; Schulze-Horn et al. in press). Mechanism design theory represents the inverse of game theory: the development and implementation of economic incentivesso-called mechanismscan lead to the achievement of desired objectives (Nisan

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