Navan Upcoming IPO: Traveling toward the public market

If at first you don't IPO, try, try again — that seems to be the motto of Navan, a corporate travel and expense management software company.

While Navan reportedly confidentially filed for an IPO in 2022, with plans to go public in 2023, that ended up not happening. Instead, the company pivoted toward improving its financial metrics like gross margins to entice Wall Street, with the goal of going public in April 2024, according to Business Insider.³

There have also been a few other rumors, corporate decisions, and statements over the past few years that have indicated an IPO was looming for Navan, but nothing has materialized so far.

For example, in May 2024, Navan's CEO and co-founder Ariel Cohen told CNBC that the company was close to IPOing, but the company needed to first hit profitability, which he said it was on track to hit later that year.⁴

Business Insider then reported in April 2024 that Navan was targeting an April 2025 IPO.⁵ In June 2024, Navan also hired a new CFO, Amy Butte, who was formerly CFO of the New York Stock Exchange and came with a lot of experience taking companies public.⁶

While no IPO has happened yet, Navan does seem to still want to move forward with one.

The latest major news on this front came in May 2025, when Reuters reported that Navan hired underwriters, led by Goldman Sachs, for an IPO that could come as soon as the fourth quarter of this year. The deal could value Navan at over $8 billion.⁷

Navan: Company background

Navan, based in Silicon Valley, started in 2015 under the name TripActions before rebranding as Navan in 2023.⁸ The company was co-founded by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig, who previously worked together as founders of StreamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform, acquired by Jive Software.⁹

Navan aims to make it easier for companies to book and manage travel, corporate cards, and expenses. Its platform uses technology such as AI to try to streamline these areas.¹⁰

Flying high while navigating turbulence

Navan has experienced fast growth in the decade since it started, but it's also faced some tricky conditions.

Since gaining its first customer, SurveyMonkey, in 2016,11 Navan quickly reached unicorn status by 2018, and it has now secured over 10,000 clients,¹² including well-known enterprises like Canva, Heineken, Snowflake, and many others.

While the pandemic posed a risk to Navan's business, the company was able to quickly adapt by launching TripActions Liquid — now rebranded as Navan Expense —to lean into the expense management side of software, rather than just travel.¹³

That pivot helped the company grow into the more comprehensive platform that it is today, with Navan reportedly projecting around $1 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2025, as reported in 2024 by Business Insider.¹⁴

While growing the top line, Navan has also made moves to improve profitability for an intended IPO, such as by cutting 145 employees — 5% of its staff — in late 2023.¹⁵

This focus on stronger financial fundamentals has come at a time when the bar has risen for the types of companies that can go public, as Navan's CFO told the New York Times earlier this year.¹⁶

However, Navan continues to face risks, even with global business travel bouncing back to higher than pre-pandemic levels.¹⁷ For one, the potential for an economic downturn could cause business travel to dry up and possibly limit the market for new spend management software customers. The April 2025 survey from the Global Business Travel Association finds that only 31% of business travel professionals are optimistic about the outlook for the business travel industry, whereas 67% felt optimistic in the November 2024 survey.¹⁸

Navan also faces competition from both legacy travel and expense management companies like SAP Concur, as well as newer companies like Airbase and Ramp. Fintech startups like Brex also could potentially compete with Navan, even though Brex and Navan are currently partnering so that companies can generate virtual Brex corporate cards for travel bookings in Navan.¹⁹ Considering the related areas these companies work in, however, it's possible that they become more direct competitors in the future, or similar fintech companies could encroach on Navan's space.

Navan stock price history

Navan's Forge Price is $6.91, which is a 6% increase over the past year but a nearly 45% decrease from Navan's stock price of $12.48 from its last primary funding round in 2022.²⁰ Forge Price is a derived data point that reflects the up-to-date price performance of venture-backed, late-stage companies, and is calculated based on a proprietary model incorporating pricing inputs from primary funding round information, secondary market transactions, and the order book on Forge marketplace.

In comparison, the Forge Private Market Index — a broad measurement that reflects the up-to-date performance and pricing activity of venture-backed, late-stage companies that are actively traded in the private market — is up 35.2% over the past year, but it's down 25.6% over the past three years, reflecting the private market's significant cooldown in 2022 after a big runup in 2020 and 2021.²¹

Navan funding history and private market valuation

Navan has raised over $1.2 billion in the past decade since its founding, starting with a seed round in 2015, when it raised over $4 million at a nearly $14 million valuation from SGVC, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Zeev Ventures.

By 2018, Navan reached unicorn status with its Series C, raising over $150 million at a valuation of over $1.2 billion and a stock price of $2.40 per share. This funding round included previous investors along with Andreessen Horowitz.

Navan's valuation kept growing quickly, with its Series D in 2019 raising nearly $280 million at a valuation of over $4 billion and a stock price of $7.41 per share. The Navan Series E in early 2021 was a less pronounced jump but still raised $362 million at a nearly $5 billion valuation, with new investors such as Addition Ventures joining in.²²

Later in 2021, Navan's Series F raised $275 million at a $7.25 billion valuation, in a round led by Greenoaks, along with others such as Elad Gil and Base Partners.²³

Navan's most recent primary funding round, its Series G, came in 2022, when it raised $154 million in equity investment from new and existing investors, while also agreeing to $150 million in structured financing from Coatue.24 This round brought Navan's valuation up to $9.2 billion and a $12.48 stock price, which is higher than its current Forge Price²⁵ and slightly above the valuation it could reportedly fetch from an IPO.²⁶

Looking ahead

Although Navan is reportedly planning to move forward with an IPO, its history of false starts suggests a possibility that those current plans will not come to fruition. Still, engaging underwriters seems to be a step in the right direction toward going public, along with Navan's other moves like hiring a new CFO last year who has significant experience with IPOs.

Check back here or take a look at Forge’s upcoming IPO calendar to stay in the loop about the Navan IPO and other pending public offerings.

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