Director General of Travelperk and co -founder Avi Meir.
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Travelperk, a corporate travel platform, raised $ 200m from investors including Atomico and EQT in a round of funding that valued the firm at $ 2.7 billion, the company told CNBC.
Fresh funding doubles Travelperk’s market value from January 2024, when it raised $ 104 million in a $ 1.4 billion rating. Noteus Partners also participated in this last round of investment.
In addition to the funding round, Barcelona -based starting revealed that Yokoy, a Swiss expenditure management platform, won, an agreement that will see it expand its extension to financial services and become a more unified travel and expense platform .
As a result of the purchase, investor Yokoy Sequoia Capital will join Softbank’s Vision’s Fund and Black stone.
Travelperk said fresh money will be used to accelerate growth, expansion of fuel in the US market and investments in product, technology and artificial intelligence.
From Covid wars to $ 2.7 billion
Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucoalo, president and leading operating official in Travelperk, told CNBC Venture capitalists withdrew in the history of the firm’s growth after withdrawing from the times of war they faced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Travelperk saw rapid income falling in 2020 and 2021 as most of the business travel came to the stop. Income has since increased to about five times more than the size it was before hitting Covid, according to Taunay-Bucalo.
“Why are we doing so good now is because we had the time where you had to be strong. You had to have a good foundation, you had to be upset,” he said.
Hillary Ball, the growing -up -centered atomico partner, said the firm was drawn to invest in Travelperk while addressing “a complex and difficult problem to solve” about corporate travel.
“This is a market that was resurrected after the pandemia,” Ball told CNBC. “In the past year, the global corporate travel value was $ 1.5 trillion-this has increased by 6% compared to pre-Pandememy and 2019. Really really clear that this is a market that is here to stay and the one who is growing up. ”
Corporate journey is a “Mamuth area of expenses” for businesses, she added.
Last year, Travelperk collected $ 104 million in softbank venture funding and others to increase its investment in the development of it.
Later in the year, the company then collected a further $ 135 million in debt funding and earned Amtrav, a CHICICAGO -based travel booking software firm to help it expand to the US market.
The company then collected a further $ 135 million in debt funding and earned Amtrav, a CHICICAGO -based Corporate Travel Booking Firm in June to help it expand to the US market.
“We think this is a huge market. We have its size of about $ 200 billion, between the US and Europe, the direct market, the NVM and the middle market,” found Carolina Brochado, partner And vice president of the EQT growth fund, CNBC told.
“We think that, out of it $ 200 billion, about half of this is uncontrolled. So you and I to a company that goes to booking.com for the hotel, going to the Expedia for flight. That’s a lot fragmented, distributed experience. “
Despite reaching the scale with over 1,500 employees and a $ 2.7 billion rating, Taunay-Bucoalo said Travelperk is not in any hurry for an IPO and is mainly focused on keeping happy customers.
“There is no plan in a short term for him,” he said. “We want to be here in 100 years … we have this almost extremely long -term view for a technology company. And as a consequence, the way we see the world is a little different. We don’t want to do these fast things and then go out. ”
Don’t worry about him ‘agents’
Taunay-Bucalo said Travelperk will continue to invest in him to improve his product offer and that buying Yokoy will bring a “extremely strong team of him”.
Devis Lusi, Yokoy’s leading technology official, has previously worked in the Swiss-French particle physics laboratory Cern.
Travelperk’s chief of technology is not concerned by the appearance of the so -called “agent”, who refers to systems that can perform autonomous actions on behalf of people rather than rely on the requirements.
Last week, Openai issued the operator, an agent of one who can perform tasks such as holiday planning and restaurant reserves on behalf of a user.
“The reality is, Things do not change overnight, ”Taunay-Bucalo said, discussing the Openai opera announcement.
“Everything we see is happening, we will try it,” he added. “We will try it. We will drop it. If it works, we keep it. If it doesn’t work, we kill it.”