TravelPerk, a corporate travel platform, raised $200 million from investors including Atomico and EQT in a funding round valuing the firm at $2.7 billion, the company told CNBC.
The fresh financing doubles TravelPerk’s market value from January 2024, when it raised $104 million on a $1.4 billion valuation. Noteus Partners also participated in this latest investment round.
In addition to the funding round, the Barcelona-based startup revealed it acquired Yokoy, a Swiss spend management platform, a deal that will see it expand its reach into financial services and become a more unified travel and expenses platform.
As a result of the acquisition, Yokoy investor Sequoia Capital will join TravelPerk’s cap table alongside existing investors General Catalyst, Kinnevik, Softbank’s Vision Fund and Blackstone.
TravelPerk said the fresh cash would be used to accelerate growth, fuel expansion in the U.S. market and investment in product, tech and artificial intelligence.
From Covid struggles to $2.7 billion
Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo, president and chief operating officer at TravelPerk, told CNBC venture capitalists were drawn to the firm’s growth story after it rebounded from times of struggle faced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
TravelPerk saw revenues decline rapidly in 2020 and 2021 as most business travel came to a standstill. Revenue has since grown to around five times the size it was before Covid hit, according to Taunay-Bucalo.
“Why we are doing so well now is because we had that period where you had to be strong. You had to have a good foundation, you had to be scrappy,” he said.
Hillary Ball, Atomico’s growth-focused partner, said the firm was drawn to investing in TravelPerk as it’s addressing “a complex and hard problem to solve” around corporate travel.
“This is a market that resurged following the pandemic,” Ball told CNBC. “In the past year, the global value of corporate travel was $1.5 trillion — that’s up by 6% relative to pre-pandemic and 2019. It’s really clear that this is a market that’s here to stay and one that’s growing.”
Corporate travel is a “mammoth area of spend” for businesses, she added.
Last year, TravelPerk raised $104 million in venture funding from SoftBank and others to ramp up its investments in the development of AI technology and products.
The company subsequently raised a further $135 million in debt financing and acquired AmTrav, a Chicago-based corporate travel booking software firm, in June to help it expand in the U.S. market.
“We think this is a very big market. We’ve sized it at about $200 billion, between the U.S. and Europe, of directly addressable market, SME and mid-market,” Carolina Brochado, found partner and deputy head of EQT’s growth fund, told CNBC.
“We think that, out of that $200 billion, about half of that is unmanaged. So, it’s you and me at a company going to Booking.com for the hotel, going to Expedia for the flight. This is a very fragmented, disjointed experience.”
Despite reaching scale with over 1,500 employees and a $2.7 billion valuation, Taunay-Bucalo said TravelPerk is in no rush for an IPO and is primarily focused on keeping customers happy.
“There is no plan in the short term for it,” he said. “We want to be here in 100 years … We have this almost unusually long-term view for a tech company. And as a consequence, the way we see the world is a little bit different. We don’t want to do these quick things and then get out.”
Not worried about AI ‘agents’
Taunay-Bucalo said TravelPerk will continue investing in AI to enhance its product offering and that the Yokoy acquisition will bring an “extremely strong AI team.”
Devis Lussi, Yokoy’s chief technology officer, previously worked at the Swiss-French particle physics laboratory CERN.
TravelPerk’s technology chief isn’t concerned by the emergence of so-called “agentic” AI, which refers to systems that can carry out actions autonomously on people’s behalf instead of relying on prompts.
Last week, OpenAI released Operator, an AI agent that can perform tasks such as planning vacations and making restaurant reservations on a user’s behalf.
“The reality is, things don’t change overnight,” said Taunay-Bucalo, discussing OpenAI’s Operaor announcement.
“Anything that we see is happening, we’re going test it,” he added. “We’re going to test it. We’re going to release it. If it works, we keep it. If it doesn’t work, we kill it.”
People stand in front of an Apple store in Beijing, China, on April 9, 2025.
Tingshu Wang | Reuters
Apple iPhone sales in China rose in the second quarter of the year for the first time in two years, Counterpoint Research said, as the tech giant looks to turnaround its business in one of its most critical markets.
Sales of iPhones in China jumped 8% year-on-year in the three months to the end of June, according to Counterpoint Research. It’s the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since the second quarter of 2023.
Apple’s performance was boosted by promotions in May as Chinese e-commerce firms discounted Apple’s iPhone 16 models, its latest devices, Counterpoint said. The tech giant also increased trade-in prices for some iPhone.
“Apple’s adjustment of iPhone prices in May was well timed and well received, coming a week ahead of the 618 shopping festival,” Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint said in a press release. The 618 shopping festival happens in China every June and e-commerce retailers offer heavy discounts.
Apple’s return to growth in China will be welcomed by investors who have seen the company’s stock fall around 15% this year as it faces a number of headwinds.
Since then, Huawei has aggressively launched devices in China and has even begun dipping its toe back into international markets. The Chinese tech giant has found success eating away at some of Apple’s market share in China.
Huawei’s sales rose 12% year-on-year in the second-quarter, according to Counterpoint. The firm was the biggest player in China by market share in the second quarter, followed by Vivo and then Apple in third place.
“Huawei is still riding high on core user loyalty as they replace their old phones for new Huawei releases,” Counterpoint Senior Analyst Ivan Lam said.
Chinese tech giant Baidu has bolstered its core search platform with artificial intelligence in the biggest overhaul of the product in 10 years.
Analysts told CNBC the move was a bid to keep ahead of fast-moving rivals like DeepSeek, rather than traditional search players.
“There has been some small pressure on the search business but the focus on AI and Ernie Bot is a key move ahead,” Dan Ives, global head of tech research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC by email. Ernie Bot is Baidu’s AI chatbot.
“Baidu is not waiting around to watch the paint dry, full steam ahead on AI,” he added.
Baidu AI overhaul
Baidu is China’s biggest search engine, but — as is also being seen by Google — the search market is being disrupted.
Users are flocking instead to AI services such as ChatGPT or DeepSeek, which shocked the world this year with its advanced model it claimed was created at a fraction of the cost of rivals.
But Kai Wang, Asia equity market strategist at Morningstar, also noted that short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou are also getting into AI search and piling pressure on Baidu.
To counter this, Baidu made some major changes to its core search product:
Users can now enter more than a thousand characters in the search box, versus 28 previously;
Questions can be asked in a more direct and conversational manner, mirroring how people now use chatbots;
Users can ask questions through voice but also prompt the seach engine with pictures and files;
Baidu has integrated its AI chatbot features, which enable users to generate photos, text and videos, into the product.
“This is more aligned with how people use ChatGPT and DeepSeek in terms of how they look for answers,” Wang said.
Outside of China, Google has also been looking to enhance its core search product with AI, highlighting how search has been under pressure from the burgeoning technology.
Baidu on the offense
Baidu was one of China’s first movers when it came to AI, releasing its first models and ChatGPT-style product Ernie Bot to the public in 2023. Since then, it has aggressively launched updated AI models.
However, the Beijing-headquartered company has also faced intense competition from fellow tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent, as well as upstarts such as DeepSeek.
These companies have also been launching new models and infusing AI into their products and Baidu’s stock has fallen behind as a result. Baidu shares have risen around 2.5% this year, versus a 30.5% surge for Alibaba and a 20% rise for Tencent.
“This is a defensive and offensive move … Baidu needs to be aggressive and perception-wise show they are not the little brother to Tencent on the AI front,” Wedbush Securities’ Ives added.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
