Navan's name is a palindrome built from "navigate" and "avant," meaning navigating forward. Until 2023 it was called TripActions, a corporate travel booker that had grown into a $9.2 billion startup. Business travel had collapsed in the pandemic and then come back. Navan bet that companies wanted travel booking, company cards, and expense reports in one place, so nobody had to tape receipts to a form. It went public in October 2025 still losing money.

TripActions, Renamed

Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig had already sold one startup, StreamOnce, to Jive Software. In May 2015 they founded TripActions to fix corporate travel booking. Andreessen Horowitz led a $154 million round in 2018 that valued the company above $1 billion. In 2020 it launched TripActions Liquid, a payments and expense product. It bought the German travel company Comtravo in 2022 and rebranded as Navan in February 2023.

Twenty-Five Dollars, Still Unprofitable

Navan sold 30 million shares at $25 each, and existing holders sold 6.9 million more. It began trading on Nasdaq as NAVN on October 30, 2025. Revenue was growing about 30 percent a year, but the company was not yet profitable. Twig held about 43 percent of the voting power and Cohen about 24 percent. In September 2026 Navan bought BoomPop, an AI events platform.

Cover: The Thames, or The Triumph of Navigation, James Barry. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a triumph of navigation (navigating forward).