In 2015 a company that wanted control over employee travel licensed an online booking tool, usually Concur, which SAP had just bought with 23,000 customers, and paid a travel agency to ticket and service the trips NV23 NV26. The largest accounts went to big agencies such as Amex GBT, BCD and Carlson, while Expedia's Egencia sold its own tool with agency service and, by Contrary's account, charged separately for support NV57 NV27. Many bookings still went through agents by phone NV20. The tools had to enforce policy, negotiated rates and trip codes, which added screens and clicks, and they earned suppliers' lowest commissions, about $3 a hotel night against roughly $30 on consumer sites NV25. Travelers went around them: in a 2015 GBTA survey about 42% booked on their own, blaming confusing policies and 'relatively arcane booking tools', and more than half then had to report their bookings to the company by hand NV24. Since the money was the company's, employees had little reason to choose the cheaper option NV19.
Navan
TripActions won companies with a booking tool their travelers preferred and its own agents behind it; because it ran the agency itself, it could later hand much of the agents' work to software and lift its margins.
Arena: Market Conditions Before Navan
What shaped the outcome
Step 1 of 5 · 2015–19 · Corporate travel booking and management
Two frequent travelers built a booking tool employees preferred, and ran the agency behind it themselves
Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig started TripActions in 2015 after years of business travel; Cohen traced it to a night in Odesa when his hotel booking vanished and the agency that made it was closed NV5 NV6. TripActions pulled the inventory of Expedia, Priceline and Booking into one search beside the airline systems, ranked options for each traveler, and claimed a booking in six or seven minutes against the 45 minutes the founders put on legacy tools NV9 NV19 NV5. It paid travelers to save: book a hotel under the city's 'price to beat' and earn a gift card or vacation credit, and nearly 75% of users did NV8 NV19. Servicing stayed in house. Its own agents answered chat, email and phone around the clock in under a minute on average, with 93% traveler satisfaction NV2. In 2018 Cohen told Business Travel News that TripActions was 'a new kind of TMC' that put the traveler before the buyer, and named Amex GBT, BCD, Carlson and Egencia as the agencies it was replacing. He described an agent desk that merged records from Sabre, Expedia, Priceline and Booking.com into one trip, so an agent changing a flight saw the hotel it affected, and one booking fee that covered as many agent contacts as a traveler needed NV57. The S-1 still describes Navan Cloud, its own aggregation layer, and round-the-clock live service NV49. Budget under management grew 18 times in the year to October 2017, and by mid 2019 TripActions served 2,000 companies with $1.1 billion of trip budgets NV19 NV9. APCO Worldwide's chief information officer later said the firm left Egencia because 'the underlying inventory wasn't in place' and staff wanted a tool like the sites they used for personal travel; Navan reports APCO bookings took seven minutes and travel costs fell 19% NV53 NV54.
Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed named the problem in 2017: employees spend company money with little reason to economize, so a tool that is merely compliant gets bypassed NV19. Full inventory removed the main reason to book elsewhere, and rewards made saving the traveler's own gain, so the buyer's policy and the traveler's preference pointed the same way. Running the agency meant the company that made the booking also fixed it at 2 a.m., from one record of the whole trip. A Concur customer bought the tool from one vendor and the agent from another, and Egencia, which sold both, charged separately for support NV27.
Rivals SAP Concur's booking tool with a separately contracted agency such as Amex GBT, BCD or CWT; Expedia's Egencia, which sold its own tool and agency service; or travelers who booked consumer sites on their own and expensed the trip NV23 NV57 NV27 NV24.
Step 2 of 5 · 2015–26 · Corporate travel booking and management
Charged one fee per trip instead of a software licence, then let supplier commissions make travel free for small companies
TripActions sold no per-seat licence for travel. It charged a fee each time an employee booked, $20 a booking in 2018 and $25 a trip in 2019, and kept the commissions hotels and other suppliers paid NV8 NV9. In 2018 Cohen listed a platform fee, a customer success fee and one booking fee that covered every agent contact, and said the company was 'not as obsessed on back-end commissions' as a traditional agency NV57. The S-1 describes revenue as supplier commissions on booking volume plus per-trip or per-transaction fees from customers, and about 90% of fiscal 2025 revenue was usage-based, about 7% of $7.6 billion in gross bookings NV65 NV1. The free end came later. By 2023 a startup plan was free for up to 50 users, and in 2026 travel booking is free for companies with up to 300 employees because, in Navan's words, it 'is powered by travel providers' commission fees' NV29 NV28. Suppliers pay through 'commissions, incentives, or transactional fee arrangements', the S-1 says NV49. Tying revenue to trips also exposed the company: 'we make money when someone is using us', Cohen said in 2020 as revenue fell by about 95% NV17 NV16.
A finance team could start without a software budget line, and the bill rose only as employees booked through the tool, so TripActions had to win each trip rather than each seat. Cohen sold that fee, not the subsidy, as the business model in 2018 NV57; supplier commissions later carried the smallest customers entirely. The same design tied revenue to travel volume, which is why the pandemic hit it harder than a subscription business.
Rivals SAP Concur's per-user or per-transaction software fees plus an agency's transaction fees, which Cohen said charged extra for calling an agent rather than booking online NV23 NV27 NV57.
Step 3 of 5 · 2020–26 · Expense management and corporate cards
When travel stopped, it cut marketing, kept its engineers and added a card and expense product customers bought alongside travel
TripActions launched Liquid, a corporate card tied to its booking platform, in February 2020, weeks before travel stopped NV10. Revenue fell by about 95% in March NV16. Cohen modeled a 50% drop, then 70%, then laid off about 300 people, cutting a 40-person recruiting team and the brand-marketing group while keeping most of R&D NV17 NV43. 'We realized quickly that we needed to meet the needs of our customers to manage not only travel spend, but all employee spend of company money', he said NV15. It raised about $780 million during the pandemic and kept signing customers, including what Cohen called its biggest account to date NV15 NV17. Liquid had 43 customers in June 2020; expense budget under management grew 1,400% by October 2021, and Liquid revenue grew 4.2 times in 2022 NV16 NV15 NV30. Revenue reached about $300 million in 2022, against roughly $100 million before the pandemic NV27. By fiscal 2025 card payment volume was $3.7 billion and 36% of customers used three or more products NV1. The S-1 calls this land and expand: Navan lands a customer in travel, then adds payments and expense, and it reports net revenue retention above 110% NV65. It did not compete as a card issuer. Navan Connect (June 2023) reconciles expenses on a company's existing Visa or Mastercard, and the expense chief, Michael Sindicich, said Navan already returned most interchange to customers as rebates: 'it was never about being a bank' NV58. Expense subscriptions brought $46.5 million in fiscal 2025, about 10% of revenue, and about 9% in the quarter to July 2026 NV65 NV51.
Cutting growth spending while keeping engineers let the company ship card and expense features when no travel revenue was at stake, and the $780 million it raised paid for the wait. A card that knows the itinerary removes the reconciliation step that separate card, booking and expense tools leave behind; Zoom's controller said reconciliation fell from weeks to minutes NV10. CJ Gustafson of Mostly Metrics calls the result a wedge play that enters through travel and expands into expense and card NV1. The wedge widened accounts more than it changed the revenue base: Connect left card economics to the banks and to card-first rivals, and travel still produces about nine tenths of revenue NV58 NV65.
Rivals Ramp and Brex, card-first spend platforms that added travel in 2022 and 2023, and SAP Concur Expense NV27 NV42 NV65.
Step 4 of 5 · 2021–26 · Corporate travel booking and management
Bought agencies abroad to serve multinationals, then began winning global programs from the agency giants
In May 2021 TripActions made its first acquisition, Reed & Mackay, a London agency founded in 1962 that served executives in more than 50 markets. Its chief travel officer called it 'the strongest service-oriented travel agency in the world' and said the deal had been considered 'long before the pandemic', which 'created an almost unique opportunity' to buy an agency that 'very much did not need to sell' NV38. Comtravo in Germany, Resia in Sweden and Atlanta in Spain followed within 18 months, then Tripeur in India in 2023 and Regent in 2024, all at undisclosed prices NV39 NV3 NV52 NV60. By February 2022 TripActions said it had put more than $400 million into Europe and the UK in a year and that half its business was there NV59. The deals brought local inventory and tax handling: rail, low-cost carriers and VAT invoicing in Germany, GST reconciliation and rail in India NV59 NV60. International customers produced 41% of fiscal 2025 revenue NV1, and by mid 2026 Navan served 50 S&P 500 companies and said enterprise requests for proposals had tripled NV35. Amex GBT consolidated the other side, buying Egencia in 2021 and CWT in 2025 NV41. Visa then moved its travel program from CWT to Navan NV63; Cohen said Visa chose Navan because 'the old model no longer works for global enterprises' and called a Concur booking tool joined to a separate agency 'so antiquated' NV56 NV55.
The agencies supplied what a startup booking tool lacked with large multinationals: local service teams, executive travel desks, and supplier and tax arrangements in each country. Buying them was faster than building that country by country, and the pandemic made owners willing to sell. Rival consolidation helped: Navan's CFO, Amy Butte, said each merger among legacy players pushed customers to re-evaluate NV56.
Rivals American Express GBT, which bought Egencia in 2021 and CWT in 2025 and lost Visa's program to Navan that year; BCD Travel is the other agency the S-1 names NV41 NV63 NV65.
Step 5 of 5 · 2022–26 · Corporate travel booking and management
Because it ran its own agents, it could hand their work to software and earn margins the agency giants lacked
Agents were the costly part of the model: customer support ran at about 14% of revenue in 2022 NV27. Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed, a board member for ten years, says the plan from the seed round was for AI to 'assist, and then replace traditional travel agents' and so earn software margins rather than service margins NV20. In 2018 Cohen already described agents working in TripActions' own software, which merged every booking record of a trip, and proactive alerts that reached travelers before the airline did NV57. AI handled about half of support interactions in the six months to July 2025 and about 60% by mid 2026, including rebooking stranded travelers and changing hotels, and about half of the AI agent's model calls ran on Navan's own models NV49 NV35. Gross margin rose from 60% in fiscal 2024 to 74% in the quarter to July 2026, and fiscal 2026 brought the first full year of non-GAAP operating profit NV1 NV13 NV4. The S-1 contrasts Navan with 'legacy travel management companies that operate as services businesses' and names BCD Travel, Amex GBT and SAP Concur as its travel rivals NV65. A former Navan vice president told AlphaSense that the margins make a 150-person company unplayable for the giants while Navan can serve it NV50.
An agency that services trips booked in another vendor's tool keeps the trip record and the agent desk in different systems, which Cohen describes as travelers starting in Concur and ending up on the phone with an agent NV55. TripActions had built both, so each support task its software absorbed came straight off its own cost base. That separates Navan's margins from an agency's and lets it serve small companies the giants price out. The market still prices the result below its private peak: Navan listed at $25 in October 2025, closed its first day 20% lower, fell to about $2.8 billion of market value by February 2026 and was worth about $7.2 billion on September 4, 2026 NV11 NV61 NV51.
Rivals Amex GBT and BCD Travel, agencies that run on large human service teams; Amex GBT had about 18,000 employees and $2.72 billion of revenue in 2025 NV41 NV65.
Key dates
Sources
Oldest first.
- NV23 SAP to buy Concur for $8.3 billion. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV24 7 Charts Explaining U.S. Business Travelers' Booking Habits. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV19 Excited to Double Down on our Investment in TripActions. Interview
- NV8 Start-up TripActions raises $51 million to take on corporate travel giants. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV26 Corporate travel managers combat rogue bookings. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV57 TripActions' Goal: Take On Megas & Win. Founder interview
- NV25 Op Ed: Tony D'Astolfo On The Compromises Of Corporate Online Booking Tools. Outside analysis
- NV9 TripActions, A Corporate Travel Startup That Rewards Road Warriors For Booking Cheap Hotels, Is Now Worth $4 Billion. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NVX1 INTERVIEW: TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen. Interview
- NV2 In The Big Chair: Ariel Cohen of TripActions. Interview
- NV36 20VC: TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen on The Future of Business and Personal Travel & Layoffs. Interview
- NV10 TripActions Launches TripActions Liquid to Revolutionize Global Travel Payments. Company release
- NV43 Amid Layoffs, TripActions CEO Pushes R&D. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV17 Q&A: TripActions CEO on how he is preparing for 'the day after' COVID-19. Interview
- NV16 Covid-19 Nearly Killed $4 Billion Corporate Travel Startup TripActions. Now It Has A $125 Million Lifeline.. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV22 Ariel Cohen: TripActions Founder. Interview
- NV18 TripActions Buys Reed & Mackay, As New And Old, Tech And Touch Collide. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV38 TripActions acquires Reed & Mackay. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NVX2 TripActions Buys Reed & Mackay for 'White Gloves' Travel Service. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV15 From $0 in revenue to a $7.25B valuation: Why TripActions' $275M raise has fintech to thank. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV21 TripActions CEO: 'We will become the Amazon of business travel'. Interview
- NV59 TripActions moves deeper into Europe with Comtravo acquisition. Trade press
- NV37 How Distributed Teams Are Creating a New Category of Business Travel. Interview
- NV39 TripActions Group Announces Fourth European Acquisition in 18 Months. Company release
- NV30 TripActions secures $400 million in credit facilities from Goldman Sachs, SVB. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV29 TripActions Review with Pricing, Comparisons, and FAQs. Outside analysis
- NV64 20VC: Why Salesforce, SAP and Concur Will Die (transcript). Founder interview
- NV7 20VC: The Memo: Why Salesforce, SAP and Concur Will Die. Interview
- NV60 Navan acquires Indian travel expense management firm Tripeur. Trade press
- NV27 Report: Navan Business Breakdown & Founding Story. Outside analysis
- NV58 Navan takes a swipe at expense management startups with new Mastercard and Visa partnerships. Trade press
- NV54 7 Reasons Why APCO Worldwide Switched to Navan. Customer account
- NV53 The Top Reason One Company Moved from Egencia to Navan. Customer account
- NV6 Navan at 10: Reflecting on the Past Decade. Company release
- NV49 Navan, Inc. Form S-1 (and S-1/A). SEC filing
- NV65 Navan, Inc. Form S-1 (Risk Factors, MD&A overview, revenue note, Business: Competition). Company filing
- NV1 Navan IPO S-1: $613M Rev, 7% Take Rate, Amy Butte. Outside analysis
- NV31 Navan: Benchmarking the S-1 Data. Outside analysis
- NV50 Navan and the Travel Management Market: An AlphaSense Primer. Outside analysis
- NV11 Navan IPO tumbles 20% after historic debut under SEC shutdown workaround. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV20 Celebrating Navan's Landmark IPO. Interview
- NV32 Navan's Share Price Fell 20% on Its First Day of Trading. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV40 Oren Zeev turns early Navan bet into $1 billion payday. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV44 Navan misses out on recent IPO momentum, drops 20% on first day of trading. Contemporaneous trade or press report
- NV5 Navan's IPO Marks a New Era in T&E: Here's Our Story (founders' letter). Company release
- NV34 Navan's SaaS Metrics at IPO. Outside analysis
- NV45 Navan Saved Customers 16% on Business Travel According to Total Economic Impact Study. Company release
- NV48 Navan (NAVN) Business & Moat Analysis. Outside analysis
- NV63 Visa Leaves Amex GBT's CWT For Navan. Trade press
- NV56 Navan Q3 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call transcript. Interview
- NV55 Navan CEO Calls Amex GBT-SAP Concur Partnership 'Antiquated'. Trade press
- NV4 Navan revenue, valuation & funding. Outside analysis
- NV12 The Navan IPO reminds us: AI is on fire, everything else in B2B is really, really hard. Outside analysis
- NV61 20VC: From $6.2BN Market Cap to $2.8BN: What Is Not Translating About Navan's Public Story. Founder interview
- NV33 Navan: A Recent IPO Unduly Caught Up In The Tech Sell-Off. Outside analysis
- NV52 AI-driven travel platform Navan outlines growth strategy and risks (Form 10-K summary). Company filing
- NV62 Morgan Stanley elevates Navan stock to top pick on AI positioning. Outside analysis
- NV14 Navan (NAVN) Market Cap. Outside analysis
- NV46 Navan and Engine Announce Strategic Technology Partnership. Company release
- NV13 Navan Announces Strong Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Results. Company release
- NV35 Navan Fiscal Q2 2027 Earnings Call transcript. Interview
- NV51 Navan, Inc. Form 10-Q, quarter ended July 31, 2026 (cover page and revenue note), with StockAnalysis closing prices. Company filing
- NV28 Navan Pricing. Company release
- NV3 Navan, Inc.. Outside analysis
- NV41 American Express Global Business Travel. Outside analysis
- NV42 Ramp (company). Outside analysis
- NV47 SAP Concur. Outside analysis