On January 21, 2021, TripActions, the cloud-based travel and expense management platform, announced that they raised $155 million in Series E growth funding led by previous investor Andreessen Horowitz, investment firm Addition, and private investor Elad Gil. This most recent round of funding increases TripActions’ valuation to a whopping $5 billion, up $1 billion from just 18 months ago when they raised $250 million and were valued at $4 billion through Series D funding.

Rebounding from the impact of the pandemic

In February 2020, TripActions secured a $500 million revolving credit line to support its product, Liquid, which uses physical and virtual cards to help companies better streamline the business spending process. Shortly after, they watched the travel industry come to a sudden halt and were forced to lay off hundreds of employees. However, as the corporate travel industry starts to recover from the slowdown, TripActions remains optimistic. 

According to TechCrunch, a TripActions spokesperson said that corporate travel is growing between 3% to 6% “week-over-week”, which could give investors renewed faith that TripActions will recover most of its former strength. Their spokesperson continues that corporate travel will come back, “maybe not at 100 percent immediately,” but to at least 75% “within the next year.” 

Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO of TripActions states, “While COVID-19 has challenged the entire travel industry, we are grateful to be emerging during this trying time well-positioned thanks to our customers and dedication of the TripActions team.”

On G2.com, our Travel Management software category has seen a significant decrease in traffic due to the COVID-19 pandemic from this time a year ago. The number of category page views are down 36%, while individual product profile views are down 29% from the same time frame. As the world eventually puts this pandemic behind and our everyday work and professional lives go back to normal, it will be interesting to see how many companies find travel as a “need to have” or a “nice to have” job feature.

Plans for the future

With their latest injection of cash, TripActions plans to invest in its products, especially Liquid, as well as software integrations and increased features. CTO of TripActions, Ilan Twig said, “With this new funding, we’re excited to deliver even more innovation to our customers over the coming months.”

Hopefully as the company continues to grow and invest in its core products, it’s able to expand its workforce once again and remain flexible to the ever-changing corporate travel market conditions.