Corporate travel and expense management platform TripActions raises $275M

It has been a trying 18 months for many industries — but the travel sector, arguably, has been hit the hardest by the global pandemic. This is exactly why it is particularly remarkable that the corporate travel management platform TripActions is not only surviving, but is now thriving.

The Palo Alto, California-based company today announced that it has raised $275 million in a series F round of funding, at a $7.25 billion valuation. This follows its $155 million raise just nine months ago, which valued the firm at $5 billion.

Founded back in 2015, TripActions serves companies of all sizes with travel inventory including flights and accommodation, supported by a global network of travel agents. As the world entered lockdown in March 2020, TripActions was forced to lay off hundreds of staff, and the future looked bleak as its revenue dropped to zero overnight. But the company’s earlier pre-lockdown decision to launch an end-to-end spend management platform called TripActions Liquid proved a shrewd move, as it gave the company a greater inroad into finance departments looking for broader, big data insights into their corporate spending trends and habits.

Real-time contextual data

Through the TripActions spend management dashboard, companies can filter and view travel and expenses data by date, location, category, and more. In turn, this makes it easier to run reports showing real-time spend and better equip managers to keep on top of budgets.

The company has introduced myriad new products and features aimed squarely at the enterprise segment, including integrations with enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools such as NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and Xero, giving finance teams real-time access to employee spend rather than having to wait for them to submit their expenses manually.

TripActions had previously raised around $1.3 billion since its inception, and for its latest series F round the company ushered in a slew of existing backers including lead investor Greenoaks, Andreessen Horowitz, Base Partners, and Elad Gil.

With another $275 million in the bank and a host of freshly acquired enterprise clients including Snowflake and Heineken on top of existing customers such as Zoom and Box, TripActions is in a strong position to capitalize as corporate travel slowly resumes.

The company also said that due to its product expansions over the past year or so, its booking volume is now higher than its pre-pandemic levels.

“TripActions is experiencing massive growth as companies recognize the imperative for consumer-grade tech tools and efficiency that comes from real-time, contextual data,” TripActions cofounder and CEO Ariel Cohen noted in a press release. “Just as TripActions continues to disrupt the corporate travel market, TripActions Liquid is set to replace traditional spend management solutions.”