TravelPerk raises more than 95 million in a round led by Softbank

The corporate travel platform TravelPerk has closed an investment round with which it has raised some 95 million euros. The transaction was led by Softbank Group's venture capital fund, SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Following this round, SoftBank Investment Advisers Investment Director, Stephen Thorne, will join the startup's board of directors. The round also saw the participation of existing investors for the company, including Kinnevik and Felix Capital.

This round was an extension of the one raised two years ago, and which in January 2022 turned TravelPerk into one of Barcelona's unicorns, in a transaction led by General Catalyst. With the new funds obtained, TravelPerk will increase investment in its platform and in Artificial Intelligence (AI). It will do so with the aim of improving the customer experience with new services, and expanding product automation through AI.

Founded in 2015 by three former Booking employees, the Barcelona-based platform thus begins this 2024, after a 2023 of exponential growth. Last year, it increased its revenues by more than 70% year-on-year, while gross profit increased by more than 90% compared to the previous year, and booking volume approached 2 billion.

TravelPerk CEO and co-founder, Avi Meir, highlighted that this growth will be accompanied by an expansion of its teams, which now number more than 1,200 employees. All with a clear objective: "To build the number one Software as a Service business travel platform for SMEs and mid-market companies in Europe and the United States."

For his part, the Investment Director of SoftBank Investment Advisers highlighted that SMEs have been a "very underserved segment" within the business travel market. In this regard, Kinnevik Investment Director, Akhil Chainwala, praised TravelPerk's work and its innovation proposal: "We look forward to the next phase of responsible acceleration that this latest investment will unlock."

This new phase opens after the rapid growth experienced by the pioneering platform. It was born in an apartment in Raval and has evolved to operate its new corporate headquarters in 22@, which it opened in April. It has the largest travel inventory in the sector and management tools, as well as continuous assistance and state-of-the-art technology, and has offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. It was in 2022 when it began its expansion plans in Europe and the United States, after becoming a unicorn, a title given to companies that achieve a valuation of more than 1,000 million euros.