Navan, an expense management startup once known as TripActions, has laid off 5% of its staff, or 145 people, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch today.
Information first made the news.
“Navan has recorded strong growth over the past three years despite the challenges affecting our industry,” the spokesman wrote via email, describing the cuts as “restructuring”.
He added: “We are refocusing efforts to move faster towards profitability as we enter the next phase of the company. We have therefore taken the difficult decision to reduce the size of our global workforce by 5% to increase operational efficiency as we continue to reinvent travel and spend through innovation.”
In October 2022, Navan secured $150 million in debt and raised $154 million in equity in a post-money valuation of $9.2 billionfrom its previous valuation of $7.5 billion.
That deal came weeks after the Palo Alto-based company was said to have filed confidentially to go public sometime this year at a valuation of $12 billion. In August, a source told Business Insider that the company was now aiming to go public in April 2024.
Navan once focused strictly on travel expense management, but stepped up its overall expense management game at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when revenue literally went to zero.
Since then, it has been competing with the likes of Ramp and Brex, and integration of ChatGPT in its output reports. Notably both Staircase and Brex expanded into travel over the past two years.
Navan has not historically disclosed its financials, but earlier this year, CEO and co-founder Ariel Cohen told TechCrunch the volume of expenses processed through Navan Expense in the first quarter of 2023 increased more than 3 times compared to the first quarter of 2022 — and by 4.7 times when looking at the 12 consecutive months ending March 2023, in compared to the previous 12 months. In terms of revenue, Navan said at the time that it had seen “3x year-on-year revenue growth”.
I also asked Cohen if Navan was still planning to go public, given that filed in confidence to do so in September of last year. His response: “I think eventually we will be a public company. We’ve raised about $1.4 billion to date and in terms of expiration, we’re there to go public. In terms of growth, we are growing extremely fast and many of our metrics would argue that they are public. I don’t think the market is there right now.”
It is not unusual for companies planning to go public to lay off staff, as such cost reductions are sometimes viewed favorably by public markets.
Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Base Partners, Elad Gil, Greenoaks Capital Management, Zeev Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures and Addition Ventures, among others.
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