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IO Global Buyer Terms

Additional terms for buyers who use IO Global to discover, evaluate, and contact ingredient suppliers.

Effective Date: October 1, 2026 Last Updated: October 1, 2026

These Buyer Terms supplement the IO Global Platform Terms of Use and apply to anyone registering or using the Platform through the Buyer login path. Capitalized terms not defined here have the meaning given in the Platform Terms. Where these Buyer Terms conflict with the Platform Terms, these Buyer Terms control for the subject matter they cover.

1. Who These Terms Apply To

You are a “Buyer” if you use the Platform to search for, evaluate, contact, or source from ingredient suppliers, or to attend virtual trade shows as a visitor.

You confirm that you are using the Platform on behalf of a business that buys, specifies, formulates with, or evaluates ingredients, and that you are authorized to act for that business.

2. What You Get

Subject to your plan and to the Platform Terms, your Buyer account gives you access to:

  • IO Nexus — AI-assisted supplier search, discovery, and matching;
  • Supplier profiles and listings — company, product, capability, and certification information published by Suppliers;
  • Inquiry and RFQ tools — the ability to contact Suppliers, request quotes and samples, and book meetings;
  • Virtual trade shows — attendance, booth visits, live sessions, and 1:1 meeting booking;
  • Community network — posting opportunities and connecting with other users; and
  • Saved searches, saved suppliers, and team collaboration features, according to your plan.

Feature availability depends on your plan, as described at ioglobalgroup.com/pricing. We may add, change, or discontinue features. Where a change materially reduces a feature you pay for, Sections 5.4 and 11 of the Platform Terms apply.

3. IO Global Is Not the Seller

IO Global does not sell ingredients. The Platform is a directory and a connection service. Every purchase you make is a contract between you and the Supplier, on terms you and the Supplier agree between yourselves. IO Global is not a party to it, does not guarantee it, and is not responsible for it.

We are not responsible for, and give no warranty as to:

  • the accuracy, completeness, or currency of any Supplier profile, listing, specification, certificate, or claim;
  • the identity, legal status, ownership, solvency, or good standing of any Supplier;
  • the quality, purity, safety, provenance, or composition of any ingredient;
  • whether any Supplier holds the certifications, registrations, audits, or licenses it claims;
  • delivery, lead times, pricing, payment, title, risk of loss, or performance of any transaction; or
  • the resolution of any dispute between you and a Supplier.

Verification. Section 3 of the Platform Terms defines exactly what a Verified designation means and does not mean. In short: it is a documentary review confirming the business exists and that the products it lists are of a type permitted for sale in the United States. It is not a product test, a facility audit, an independent confirmation of the Supplier’s certifications, or an endorsement, and it does not reduce your due diligence obligations.

4. Your Due Diligence Obligations

You are solely responsible for qualifying every Supplier and every ingredient before you buy. Without limiting your own quality and regulatory procedures, you are responsible for:

  1. Independently verifying the Supplier’s legal identity, ownership, and standing;
  2. Obtaining and reviewing specifications, certificates of analysis, safety data sheets, allergen statements, and regulatory documentation directly from the Supplier;
  3. Verifying certifications, audits, and registrations directly with the issuing bodies;
  4. Conducting your own supplier qualification and, where appropriate, facility audits;
  5. Confirming that the ingredient is lawful and appropriate for your intended use, formulation, and market in every jurisdiction in which you will use, manufacture, or sell;
  6. Complying with your own obligations under applicable food safety law, including, where applicable, foreign supplier verification, supply-chain preventive controls, and traceability requirements; and
  7. Satisfying yourself as to the Supplier’s creditworthiness and your own payment and delivery risk.

Nothing on the Platform — including AI matching results, search rankings, and Verified designations — substitutes for any of the above.

5. AI Features and Matching

IO Nexus uses AI to search, rank, summarize, and match. You acknowledge that:

  • AI outputs are informational, may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date, and may be non-unique;
  • ranking and matching reflect the parameters described in Section 9 of the Platform Terms;
  • paid placements occupy distinct, labeled slots and do not change a Supplier’s position in organic results;
  • results are not a recommendation, endorsement, or certification of any Supplier; and
  • AI outputs are not technical, regulatory, quality, food-safety, legal, or purchasing advice, and are not a substitute for supplier qualification, specification review, certificate of analysis or safety data sheet review, or allergen, regulatory, or food-safety verification.

Your inputs. We do not use your searches, requests for quotation, uploaded materials, or the results generated for you to train or fine-tune third-party AI models. We use Platform content and activity to develop and improve our own search, ranking, and matching models, as described in Section 6 of the Privacy Policy, and you may object to that use at any time.

6. Your Sourcing Activity Is Confidential

We understand that what you are sourcing is commercially sensitive. The following rules govern who can see your activity, and they are commitments, not conveniences:

  • Browsing is private. Running a search, viewing a Supplier’s profile, or visiting a Supplier’s virtual booth does not disclose your name, your company, or your contact details to that Supplier.
  • Suppliers see only aggregates. Suppliers receive aggregate profile and booth traffic statistics. These do not identify individual visitors and are not constructed so as to make an individual visitor identifiable.
  • You control disclosure. Your identity and contact details are shared with a Supplier only when you take an affirmative action to contact them — sending an inquiry or message, requesting a quote or a sample, booking a meeting, or expressly choosing to share your details.
  • We do not sell your demand data. We do not sell, share, license, or otherwise disclose your sourcing activity — your searches, the suppliers and booths you view, your requests for quotation, and your stated requirements — to Suppliers, advertisers, advertising networks, data brokers, or any other third party. This activity is excluded from all advertising, audience-building, and measurement activity, and Section 5.3 of the Privacy Policy states the same exclusion.
  • What is shared for advertising. Like most websites, we use advertising and analytics cookies on our public marketing pages, and we share identifiers and company-level information with advertising partners for that purpose. You can opt out at any time through the Your Privacy Choices link or the Global Privacy Control. This never extends to your in-Platform sourcing activity.
  • Aggregated reporting. We may publish aggregated, de-identified industry trend reporting, constructed so that no individual Buyer or Buyer organization can be identified from it.

7. Contacting Suppliers and Sharing Your Details

When you contact a Supplier as described in Section 6, we share your name, business contact details, company, and the substance of your inquiry with that Supplier.

For that sharing, IO Global and the Supplier act as joint controllers under the GDPR, as described in Section 5.1 of the Privacy Policy. You may exercise your data protection rights against either IO Global or the Supplier. Once the Supplier uses your details for its own purposes, it acts as an independent controller and its own privacy notice applies.

Suppliers agree in the Supplier Terms to use Platform-sourced contacts only in connection with the Platform relationship, never to sell or transfer them, and to comply with applicable data protection and anti-spam law. If a Supplier misuses your details, report it to support@ioglobalgroup.com and we will investigate and act.

8. Your Obligations as a Buyer

You will:

  1. Use the Platform for genuine sourcing and business development purposes;
  2. Provide accurate information about your company, your role, and your sourcing requirements;
  3. Not send inquiries, requests for quotation, or messages in bad faith, including to harvest competitor pricing, to collect supplier data for resale, or to obtain samples without genuine purchasing intent;
  4. Not use Supplier contact details obtained through the Platform for unsolicited bulk communication or for any purpose unrelated to a genuine sourcing inquiry;
  5. Not scrape, extract, index, or systematically download Supplier profiles, listings, pricing, or contact data;
  6. Not use Platform data to build or train a competing product, dataset, or model;
  7. Keep confidential any non-public information a Supplier shares with you through the Platform, and use it only to evaluate a potential transaction; and
  8. Comply with all applicable laws, including sanctions, export control, food safety, and anti-corruption laws.

9. Fees

Buyer plans, including any free tier, are described at ioglobalgroup.com/pricing. Where you hold a paid Buyer subscription, Section 5 of the Platform Terms governs payment, automatic renewal, refunds, payment disputes, and late payment in full.

IO Global does not charge Buyers a commission, transaction fee, or success fee on any purchase you make from a Supplier.

10. Confidentiality

Each party will protect the other’s non-public information disclosed in connection with the Platform, use it only for the purposes of these Terms, and disclose it only to personnel and advisers who need it and are bound by comparable obligations.

This does not apply to information that is or becomes public without breach, was known to the receiving party without obligation, is independently developed without use of the disclosing party’s information, or is required to be disclosed by law — in which case the receiving party will give notice where legally permitted.

These obligations survive for three (3) years after disclosure, and indefinitely for trade secrets.

11. Term and Termination

These Buyer Terms apply for as long as you hold a Buyer account. Suspension and termination are governed by Section 12 of the Platform Terms.

12. Warranties, Liability, and Indemnity

Sections 14, 15, and 16 of the Platform Terms apply in full.

For clarity: IO Global has no liability for any loss arising out of a transaction, dispute, non-delivery, quality failure, recall, regulatory action, or contractual breach between you and a Supplier, and its aggregate liability is capped as stated in Section 15 of the Platform Terms, including the exclusions at Section 15(d) and the super-cap at Section 15(e).

13. Disputes

Section 13 of the Platform Terms governs disputes between you and IO Global, including the requirement to raise the issue with us first and the binding arbitration and class action waiver provisions.

Disputes with Suppliers are between you and the Supplier. We are not an arbiter of those disputes and have no obligation to resolve them. We will, on request, provide records of communications exchanged through the Platform, subject to the Privacy Policy and applicable law, and we may act against a Supplier under the Supplier Terms where a pattern of complaints indicates a breach.

14. Contact

IO Global Group, Inc. A Delaware corporation 500 S Main St, #800 Orange, CA 92868 United States

support@ioglobalgroup.com · privacy@ioglobalgroup.com · 877.550.3600