Technology
TravelPerk raises $200M as valuation nearly doubles to $2.7B

Barcelona-based business travel management platform TravelPerk has raised $200 million at a hefty $2.7 billion valuation — almost double the $1.4 billion valuation at its previous fundraise last year.
Alongside the raise, TravelPerk also announced it has acquired Swiss startup Yokoy to bring native expenses management into the fray.
With the travel and tourism industry just about back to pre-pandemic levels, this has proved a boon for startups offering everything from tour packages and trip-planning tools, to luggage storage and vacation rental smarts.
This trend has been reflected somewhat in the corporate sphere, too, with the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) noting that business travel was on course to hit a record $1.5 trillion in 2024 — 6.2% more than the pre-pandemic peak in 2019. This demand is filtering down into the corporate travel startup space, too, and investors are taking note. In September, news emerged that Denver-based Engine, which focuses on hotel bookings, flights, car rentals, and meeting spaces, had raised $140 million at a $2.1 billion valuation.
TravelPerk, for its part, touts an all-in-one platform for businesses to book, manage and report all their domestic and international travel, with integrations that extend the platform to functions such as HR and expenses.
While the pandemic has had an indelible impact on working culture in terms of remote and hybrid-working, there is little correlation between this and the the kind of corporate travel that TravelPerk is concerned with. TravelPerk president and chief operating officer, Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo, pointed to its recent Value of Business Travel report, which found that companies are still planning to invest in travel to boost sales and new business efforts, such as by traveling to conferences.
“Hybrid and remote working models have had a minimal impact on demand for business travel — those who are travelling for work will continue to do so, because it’s part of their job,” Taunay-Bucalo told TechCrunch over email. “Whether it’s for a sales meeting or to install a wind turbine, there are many situations where workers need to be on the ground and in person.”
However, a more distributed workforce does mean that companies are investing more in offsites, which require travel. And TravelPerk sees this decentralization as a perfect opportunity to gets its technology into the hands of more people.
“Decentralised travel systems empower employees to manage their own bookings, and while in the past that meant a lack of control over expenses and compliance, tools built into our platform give control and visibility back to the business by providing oversight without burdening travel managers with logistical complexities,” Taunay-Bucalo said.

“Unified travel and expense”
Founded in 2015, TravelPerk had previously raised around $660 million in equity and debt capital, and with another $200 million in the bank, the company said it’s now doubling down on its global growth plans. This includes the U.S. market, where it acquired Chicago-based rival Amtrav last year with support from $135 million in debt financing.
But these growth efforts also include expanding into tangential verticals. Among TravelPerk’s existing integrations is Yokoy, an AI-enabled spend management platform backed by Sequoia Capital. And as part of its Series E funding announcement Monday, TravelPerk said it’s now acquiring Yokoy outright for an undisclosed sum — though TechCrunch is told that it was a “nine figure” transaction, which makes sense given that Yokoy had raised around $107 million since its inception in 2019.
This will allow TravelPerk to offer a “deeper and more unified travel and expense offering,” with expenses baked natively into its core platform rather than relying exclusively on third-party integrations.
“Our focus has never been stronger as we expand across core markets, accelerate growth in the U.S., and now work to become the number one travel and expense management platform,” TravelPerk co-founder and CEO Avi Meir (pictured above) said in a statement.

This mirrors moves elsewhere in the tech realm. For example, TripActions expanded into expenses management back in 2020 in response to a pandemic that put most companies’ travel plans on long-term hiatus. Ramp, meanwhile, moved in the opposite direction in 2022, adding travel management to its existing expenses product.
Expanding into expenses makes a great deal of sense, as it future-proofs against whatever headwinds the travel sector faces today and in the future. Indeed, expenses is something that all businesses have to deal with, regardless of their position on corporate travel.
As a result of the transaction, Yokoy’s team, including CEO Philippe Sahli and CTO Devis Lussi, will join TravelPerk, where they will set about integrating their respective products.
“Our partnership with Yokoy has already been a great success, and we are excited to take it to the next level by welcoming Phil, Devis, and the rest of the team to TravelPerk,” Meir said. “We share a common vision for the role of AI reshaping the future of travel and expense management, and the innovation coming out of Yokoy’s AI labs in Zurich is seriously impressive.”
TravelPerk’s Series E round was led by European venture capital firm Atomico, with participation from EQT Growth, Noteus Partners, Kinnevik, General Catalyst, among other existing investors.

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Technology
North Carolina Amazon workers vote against unionizing

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today.
According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results still need to be certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
In a statement provided to CNBC, CAUSE blamed the results on “Amazon’s willingness to break the law,” claiming, “Amazon’s relentless and illegal efforts to intimidate us prove that this company is afraid of workers coming together to claim our power.”
Amazon spokesperson Eileen Hards denied the company had broken any laws and said, “We’re glad that our team in Garner was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep a direct relationship with Amazon.”
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize in 2022, and workers at a Philadelphia location of Amazon-owned Whole Foods also voted in favor of unionization earlier this year. The grocery chain has asked the NLRB to set those results aside.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s lawyers recently joined SpaceX in a legal challenge to the NLRB’s structure.

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Technology
Uber sues DoorDash, alleging anti-competitive tactics

Ride-share giant Uber filed a lawsuit Friday against DoorDash, accusing the delivery outfit of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals.
Uber alleges in the lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of California, that its chief rival bullied restaurants into only working with DoorDash. Uber claims that DoorDash, which holds the largest share of the food delivery market in the U.S., threatens restaurants with multimillion-dollar penalties or the removal or demotion of the businesses’ position on the DoorDash app.
Specifically, Uber claims DoorDash pressures restaurants to strike exclusive or near-exclusive agreements for first-party delivery services, meaning that DoorDash insists on solely handling orders placed through restaurants’ own websites, says Uber.
“Uber’s case has no merit,” said a DoorDash spokesperson in an email to TechCrunch on Friday. “Their claims are unfounded and based on their inability to offer merchants, consumers, or couriers a quality alternative.”
DoorDash and Uber Eats are best known for their respective apps to connect restaurant, consumers and gig economy workers. Consumers use the apps to find and order food like pizza, egg rolls, or pad thai from restaurants. A gig economy worker then picks up and delivers the food to the consumer.
But the two companies also compete with their own white-label delivery services – called Uber Direct and DoorDash Drive on-Demand – which both launched in 2020. These services are cheaper for restaurants, allowing patrons to order directly from the restaurants’ own apps and websites, while Uber and DoorDash manage the couriers behind the scenes.
Uber claims in its suit that DoorDash handles first-party deliveries for more than 90% of the largest enterprise restaurants in America, and it alleges DoorDash used anticompetitive practices to win the market.
“More than 1 million merchants partner with Uber Eats because we’ve helped them to reach more customers and provided them the freedom to decide how they want to grow their businesses with delivery,” Sarfraz Maredia, head of the Americas for delivery at Uber, said in an emailed statement. “We’ve increasingly heard complaints from restaurants that DoorDash’s tactics are limiting that freedom and punishing them for seeking better options. We hope this filing puts an end to those unfair practices so that restaurants can choose what’s best for them without fear of penalty or retribution.”
In one example from the lawsuit, Uber says that an unnamed “significant restaurant company” told the company it would not move forward with a long-planned rollout of Uber Direct across several of its restaurant brands. The reason, Uber claims, is because DoorDash allegedly threatened to increase the rates it charges the restaurant company to use DoorDash’s third-party delivery services if it continued to use Uber Direct.
Uber says this was not a one-off event, but rather that multiple customer have told the company they feel “like they have a ‘gun to their head,’ that DoorDash is a ‘monopolist,’ and that they are being bullied by DoorDash.”
Uber has requested a jury trial; the company did not specify the amount of damages in the complaint. However, Uber claims these anticompetitive practices have cost the company “millions of dollars in revenue” and also restricted the growth of Uber Direct.

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Technology
DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is reportedly set to meet with China’s Xi Jinping

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng is reportedly set to meet with China’s top politicians, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, during a summit that Alibaba founder Jack Ma is also expected to attend.
The summit, which could happen as soon as next week, may be intended as a signal by China’s Communist Party that it aims to adopt a more supportive stance toward domestic private-sector firms, according to Bloomberg. In 2020, Chinese authorities effectively prevented Alibaba from executing what would have been the biggest public offering in history.
Liang, who founded DeepSeek in 2023 as a subsidiary of his quantitative hedge fund, High-Flyer, rose to prominence last month after DeepSeek’s openly available AI models showed strong performance against leading models from OpenAI and other American AI companies. U.S. officials have raised concerns over the explosive popularity of DeepSeek’s models and services, which they perceive as a threat to the U.S.’ pole position in the AI race.

A blog which focuses on business, Networth, Technology, Entrepreneurship, Self Improvement, Celebrities, Top Lists, Travelling, Health, and lifestyle. A source that provides you with each and every top piece of information about the world. We cover various different topics.
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