Corporate Travel Is Booming. This AI Company Is Capitalizing

**Zaid** (0:00)
Welcome back to The Rundown, interview edition. Today, we are talking to Aurélien Nolf, the CFO of Navan. Navan is an AI-powered platform that combines corporate travel and expense management. Now, that doesn't sound very sexy, but today, thousands of corporations, from Netflix to OpenAI, use Navan to handle business travel. The company just reported blowout earnings where revenues were up 40%, and the stock popped almost 20% on the news. So in today's conversation, we get into how Navan actually makes money, why business travel is booming, and why Navan is building their own AI models instead of using the ones from OpenAI. This was a great conversation. I think you guys are gonna enjoy it. So let's get into it.
All right, guys, today we are talking to Aurélien Nolf, the CFO of Navan. Aurélien, welcome to The Rundown.

**Aurélien Nolf** (0:54)
Thank you so much for having me today. It's great to be here.

**Zaid** (0:57)
I'm super excited for today's conversation. You know, I just want to first start with like, to learn more about Navan. You know, I feel like not many people know about the company, but you guys recently reported earnings and the stock's starting to make some noise. So for our audience out there, can you explain what Navan does and what problems you guys are solving out in the market?

**Aurélien Nolf** (1:15)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Navan is what we think the best travel agency on the planet, right? Our goal is to, we mainly serve corporations, so we are a travel agent for companies. And so our co-founders, Ariel Cohen and Elon Tweek, created the company 10 years ago with this idea that technology can solve all the business travelers issues, right? When you think about disruption during your trips, the way you book a trip, the way you can change a flight, the way you can combine the best hotel with the best flight, etc.,
and optimize for the cost, for the efficiencies, and also have a great travel experience. That's what they've been building over the last 10 years.
And we are the only solution out there that is really AI native and really helping travelers have a smooth experience from the moment when they book a flight to the moment when they expense all their expense notes, etc. So this is what we do. We are growing very, very fast. We, as you mentioned, we just had our learning school. We had a killer quarter. We just printed 50% of your bookings growth. So we are gaining a lot of share in a very big market. So it's very, very exciting times here at Navan.

**Zaid** (2:35)
Yeah, your earnings showed that your bookings were at 50% and revenue was up 40% as well. Can you explain how the company makes money? Is it just a percentage of the bookings or is there other elements as well?

**Aurélien Nolf** (2:49)
Yeah, it's a great question. So it's actually something I've been spending a lot of time helping people really understand. So when we sign, when a customer like, so we have very big customers like Netflix or Yahoo or Visa that are customers of Navan, they usually ask all their team members to use Navan to book their trips, right? When they travel for work.
And so we charge a trip fee. So it's a small amount of money that we charge every time someone is booking a trip. But then we make money from our suppliers, right? So think about airlines, hotels, et cetera. They are giving us a certain percentage of the money they are making on that trip. And that's how we make most of our money, right? Sixty five percent of our revenue is coming from our suppliers.

**Zaid** (3:38)
Wow. OK, gotcha. So you're making, so you make a trip fee, and then you're also getting a cut of the actual total cost of the trip as well. So I imagine some of the gross bookings increase and revenue increase were a result of airline prices going up and travel going up over the last quarter because of just, you know, because of the war and things like that.

**Aurélien Nolf** (4:00)
That's right. Just a little bit. So we grew, as I said, fifty percent year over year. And what we said is three percentage point was coming from inflation. So we mainly saw inflation on flights, right? With the jet fuel cost going up after all this disruption in the Middle East. We saw the average price tickets for the flights going up significantly in March and April.
But it's only a small part of our revenue because the thing is, we've been growing the number of customers joining the platform at a very, very significant pace over the last six months. And so the vast, vast majority of our growth is coming from those new customers, but also existing customers that are booking more and more trips.