Montréal’s Hopper has raised $175 million USD in Series G financing led by new, New York-based investor GPI Capital, as it looks to capitalize on growing demand for its travel app.
The all-equity round also saw participation from new investor Glade Brook Capital, and return investors WestCap, Goldman Sachs Growth, and Accomplice. Lead investor GPI Capital makes growth equity investments in technology, consumer, and industrial companies. As part of the round, Khai Ha, managing partner at GPI Capital, has joined Hopper’s board.
Hopper said it is on pace to achieve 330 percent revenue growth compared to last year, adding that it surpassed its pre-pandemic revenue peak during Q1 2020 by over 100 percent.
According to TechCrunch, Hopper’s Series G round values the company at over $3.5 billion. Hopper confirmed the valuation to BetaKit, noting the financing brings its total funding to date to about $583 million. The round comes nearly five months after Hopper secured $170 million USD in Series F financing. According to The Globe and Mail, Hopper’s March Series F financing valued the company at close to $2 billion USD. This was reportedly close to double Hopper’s valuation following its $70 million USD round in 2020.
The startup plans to use the capital from its Series G round to scale its customer support team following “a year of unprecedented customer support requests” during COVID-19.
Founded in 2007, Hopper offers a mobile-only travel marketplace that boasts over 60 million downloads. The company, which began as an app that tracked changes in flight prices, now makes most of its money selling ancillary services, including price and trip protection. According to Hopper, the company’s FinTech offerings now represent a majority of its revenue. Earlier this year, Hopper launched Hopper Cloud, a B2B initiative that allows travel providers to integrate and distribute Hopper’s FinTech and agency content.
Hopper reportedly laid off just under half its staff (about 250 employees) during the beginning of the pandemic, as COVID-19 hit the travel industry hard. According to Hopper, the company has since seen many of those impacted by layoffs return, and the startup has grown to 1,200 employees.
Hopper said it is on pace to achieve 330 percent revenue growth compared to last year, adding that it surpassed its pre-pandemic revenue peak during Q1 2020 by over 100 percent.
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Amid this growth, Hopper said it has scaled its customer support team by 200 percent over the past year and developed self-serve automation tools that it says ensure 60 percent of its customer support requests “are now resolved instantly.” Now, fresh funding in hand, Hopper plans to add 500 more employees, 300 of which will be focused on customer service.
To support these hiring goals, Hopper is actively looking to acqui-hire other teams in travel, data science, or engineering-heavy startups to introduce new product offerings and fuel international expansion.
Hopper said it has had recent success integrating the teams of two travel tech startups, New York’s Journy and Paris-based Mowgli, which it acqui-hired in June and August, respectively. Hopper said these teams will help accelerate its expansion into Europe and entry into new travel categories, including home rentals.
UPDATE (08/17/21): This story has been updated to include responses from Hopper.
Feature image courtesy of Hopper