The Series E round valued the startup at $5 billion.

TripActions, a cloud-based solution for business travel and expense management utilized by 4,000 companies across the globe, announced Thursday its Series E funding of $155 million. Andreessen Horowitz, Lee Fixel-founded Addition, and investor Elad Gil co-led the round. Existing investors Zeev Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Greenoaks Capital also participated.  (BTN Business Travel News)

Investment outlook

The massive setback from the pandemic forced TripActions to lay off hundreds of employees.

However, the platform bounced back by developing more than 40 major new product enhancements and capabilities, including a COVID-19 dashboard, a new spend analysis dashboard, enhanced traveler safety reporting, automated unused ticket technology, TripActions Liquid Expense, and TripActions Enterprise Edition.

TripActions now manages corporate travel budgets worth more than $3.6 billion for its customers.

Co-lead investor Elad Gil recognized that the platform was positioning itself to gain from the eventual reopening of the economy. Personally, he was on the hunt for investment in pandemic-hit sectors. His view: the developed world would probably get over the crisis by late 2021.

“I thought it was wise to invest while things still looked tough for travel because it would be much more expensive to invest when things come rushing back,” Gil told CNBC. “Business travel is not going to go away.”

Meanwhile, TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen echoes that viewpoint. He told BTN that the latest round was “a testament to the promise of a return to normal now that a vaccine is being distributed and the tremendous market opportunity ahead of us.”

“2020 tested us all like no other, but the team came together, focusing on customers’ needs with new product capabilities to ensure traveler safety, drive cost savings and efficiently manage global T&E programs,” said Ilan Twig, co-founder & CTO, TripActions.

Use of funds

The startup will use the funds to further develop its travel and spend data platform.

The firm is now flush, however, with the proceeds of the previous funding of $125 million in June still sitting in the bank.

According to BTN, TripActions could also use the dry powder to strategically acquire smaller entities that have been hit by the COVID storm.

“We are always looking at the market and growth opportunities,” said a non-committal Cohen.

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