Travelperk CEO and co -founder Avi Meir.
Travelperk
The company told CNBC that Travelperk was a company travel platform that raised $ 200 million in investors from investors, including Atomico and EQT, with the company’s funds of $ 2.7 billion.
Beginning in January 2024, fresh financing has made the market value of Travelperk a bit of market value. At that time, it raised $ 104 million with a valuation of $ 1.4 billion. Noteus Partners also participated in the latest investment.
In addition to the capital round, the startup headquarters in Barcelona also revealed that it acquired Yokoy, Switzerland’s expenditure management platform, which will expand it to financial services and become a more unified travel and expenditure platform.
As a result of this acquisition, YOKOY investor Sequoia Capital will join Travelperk’s hat table with existing investors general catalyst Kinnevik, Kinnevik, Soft silver Visual Fund and BlackstoneEssence
Travelperk said that fresh cash will be used to accelerate growth, fuel expansion in the US market, and investment in products, technology and artificial intelligence.
Struggling from co -struggle to $ 2.7 billion
Jean-Christophe-Bucalo, the president and chief operating officer of Travelperk, told CNBC venture capitalists to be attracted by the company’s growth story after rebounding during the struggle between the 19th period.
Travelperk saw that revenue fell rapidly in 2020 and 2021 because most business travel stagnated. Taunay-Bucalo said that the income has increased since then COVID has been hit five times before.
He said: “Why do we do well now because we have a period of strong. You must have a good foundation and must become awkward.”
Atomico’s growth -centric partner Hillary Ball said the company invested Travelperk on Travelperk because it solved the “complicated and difficult problem” around the company’s travel. Essence
Ball told CNBC: “This is a market reappeared after a big popularity.” “In the past year, the global value of the company’s travel is 1.5 trillion US dollars-compared to the pre-popular and 2019, this number has risen to rise. 6 %. This is a market that can stay here and is growing. “
She added that the company’s travel is the “behemoth of the expenditure” of the company.
Last year, travelperk Raising a risk investment of $ 104 million Raise their investment in AI technology and product development from SoftBank and others.
Late this year In addition, it raised $ 135 million in debt financing and received AMTRAVIt is a company travel booking software in Chicago to help it expand in the US market.
The company then raised $ 135 million in debt financing in June and acquired AMTRAV, a company -based company travel booking software company, to help it expand in the US market.
“We think this is a very large market. Between the United States and Europe, the market is directly addressing. Director, tell CNBC.
“We believe that about half of this is about $ 200 billion. About half of them cannot be managed. Therefore, it is the company where you and I go to a hotel in Booking.com in a company and fly to Expedia for flight. This is a very decentralized. , Out of experience “.”
Although more than 1,500 employees and US $ 2.7 billion have reached the scale, TAUNAY-BCALO said that Travelperk did not work hard to make customers satisfied.
He said, “There is no plan in the short term.” “We want to come here 100 years later … We have almost a long -term view of a technology company. Therefore, we see the way the world is different. We don’t want to do these fast ways. Things, then leave “.”
Don’t worry about AI “agent”
Taunay-Bucalo said that Travelperk will continue to invest in AI to enhance its products, and Yokoy’s acquisition will bring “strong AI team”.
Devis Lussi, the chief technician of Yokoy, worked in CERN in the Switzerland-French particle physics laboratory.
Travelperk’s technical person in charge does not care about the emergence of the so -called “agent” AI. This system refers to the system that can represent people independently instead of relying on the prompt system.
Last week, OpenAI released an operator, which is an AI agent that can perform tasks such as planning holidays and representative users for restaurant reservations.
“Reality is,,,,, Things will not change overnight. “
He added: “Everything we see is happening, we are testing it.” “We will test it. We will publish it. If it is effective, we will keep it. If it does not work, we will kill it, we will kill Death it.
