TravelPerk CEO and co-founder Avi Meir.
TravelPerk
TravelPerk primarily uses AI technologies like machine learning and neural networks in the back end to help automate a lot of the manual tasks involved in corporate travel — for example, connecting users with the best prices for flights and accommodation.
“Traditionally, if you look at legacy players, like American Express or Expedia, or holiday travel sites, most of the work is done manually by travel agents,” Avi Meir, CEO and co-founder of TravelPerk, told CNBC.
“This is one of the reasons why you don’t really see huge success at scale with travel, because technology was not used, and technology is how you scale today.”
SoftBank invested $70 million in TravelPerk’s latest round, which the company said was an extension of its “D-1” funding round. The fundraising round shows SoftBank is placing a major bet on a company driving disruption in corporate travel through new technologies, such as AI — which has seen significant buzz…