NAVAN (TRIPACTIONS)

Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig were Israeli-born entrepreneurs who had previously built and sold companies. They founded TripActions in 2015 after experiencing the pain of corporate travel firsthand.

Booking through legacy corporate travel tools (SAP Concur, Egencia) felt like using software from 2003. The user experience was terrible, prices were high, and the tools were designed for travel managers, not travelers.

TripActions built a modern, consumer-grade booking experience for corporate travel. Employees could book flights and hotels as easily as using a personal travel app.

The platform used AI to recommend options and learn preferences.

Navan makes money from booking commissions, software subscriptions for expense management, and interchange fees on its corporate credit card. The company charges companies a SaaS fee for the expense management platform and earns commissions from hotels and airlines on each booking.

The corporate card product, Navan Expense, is a credit card that automatically categorizes spending, captures receipts, and reconciles expenses. This is where the fintech angle comes in.

Every swipe generates data and revenue.

Navan Travel is the corporate booking platform. AI-powered recommendations, policy compliance built in, and a consumer-grade user experience.

Navan Expense is the corporate card and expense management system. Auto-categorization, receipt capture, and real-time spending visibility.

Navan Connect allows companies to use Navan's expense features even if they book travel through other platforms.

Navan grew by going after mid-market companies that were too small for SAP Concur's enterprise sales team but too large to manage travel on personal credit cards and spreadsheets. This was a massive underserved market.

The product-led growth worked. Once one department in a company adopted Navan, it spread internally because employees preferred the experience.

The corporate card accelerated adoption because it unified travel and expenses in one platform.

Rebranding from TripActions to Navan in February 2023 signalled the shift from travel-only to full corporate spend management, and set up the Nasdaq listing that followed in October 2025.

COVID nearly killed the company. Corporate travel went to zero in March 2020.

Navan had to lay off hundreds of employees. The company survived by pivoting quickly to expense management, which does not require travel, and raising emergency funding.

Profitability is the current fight. Navan listed at roughly $6.2 billion, about $3 billion below its last private valuation, and the stock dropped 20% on its first day as investors questioned when the losses stop.

Competing with SAP Concur is a long fight. Concur has deep enterprise relationships and switching costs are high.

Many large companies are locked into multi-year Concur contracts.

Navan raised over $1.4 billion privately from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, Coatue and Group 11, peaking at a $9.2 billion valuation in an October 2022 round. It went public on Nasdaq on 30 October 2025 at $25 a share, raising about $923 million at roughly a $6.2 billion valuation.

That is about $3 billion below where private investors had last marked it. The stock closed its first day down 20% and fell further into December before recovering through 2026.