Navan Lays Off 145 People as Part of ‘Profitability’ Goal

Navan, a travel and expense management startup, has laid off 5% of employees at the company, accounting for about 145 people.

Kelly Soderlund, a spokesperson for Navan, said in an email that the layoff affected teams across departments. She did not confirm the exact number of people who were affected, but the Navan website says it has more than 2,900 employees across 40 offices globally.

“Navan has recorded strong growth over the past three years despite the challenges affecting our industry,” Soderlund stated. “We are refocusing efforts to move faster toward profitability as we enter the next phase of the company. As such, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our global workforce by 5% to increase operational efficiencies as we continue to reinvent travel and expense through innovation.”

The Information was the first to confirm the news.

The Navan Connect platform is meant to eliminate expense reports for traveling employees and reconciles transactions for corporate finance departments.  

Navan has raised well over $1 billion in venture capital, most recently $154 million in a series G round in October 2022. The company has been building and expanding partnerships during that time, most recently with Citi.

Navan reportedly filed confidential paperwork in September 2022 for an IPO at a $12 billion valuation, though the company did not share information about specific plans or timing with Skift. Soderlund did not respond to a new question about the timeline of going public, though a Business Insider story from August said that it is aiming for a late April 2024 IPO. That itself of course is dependent on how the IPO window looks then.

Navan is among a growing number of expense management platform companies and startups, many of which have raised venture capital this year. Rivals include SAP Concur, Expensify, Egencia, and TravelPerk. 

Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Navan, spoke at the 2023 Skift Global Forum about the challenges of implementing AI. He announced at the event that Navan was launching Hotel Concierge by Ava, the latest in a series of updates to its traveler-facing chatbot Ava.