- YGO has raised €8 million in its Series A funding round, led by Ventech, to enable travel inventory to work with AI.
- Online travel agencies retain 15-25% of each booking, and YGO states that around 10 customers currently use its AI platform to sell directly.
- The money will fund sales, go-to-market activities, and further development of the AI platform.
Berlin-based startup YGO raised an €8 million Series A round, led by Ventech, to help travel suppliers gain control over their own AI infrastructure. Sake Bosch, Caesar, and several business angels also took part in the round.
YGO, founded in 2023 by Julian Kögel, Willi Ibbeken and Sebastian Kreutzberger, takes separate hotel and product data, organises it for travel companies, and integrates it with their current booking systems.
As a result, tour operators can offer semantic search, personalised recommendations, automated customer service, and the ability to book on their own platforms or via external AI assistants without overhauling their technology.
“Travel is one of the few major industries that still relies on infrastructure which was never intended for a world where AI comes first. That’s why we created YGO: to provide the travel industry with the necessary infrastructure so that its inventory can be made accessible and bookable for AI, whether via their own platforms or through external AI agents,” said Kögel, co-founder and CEO of YGO.
Shifting from tour operations to AI infrastructure
Kögel has more than 12 years’ experience in the travel industry, most recently at a B2B2C tour operator that arranged flights and hotels for various channels. When large language models first appeared about five years ago, he recognised a major opportunity for change.
“It became very clear that this is something rather like an app store moment for the travel industry,” he said to Tech Funding News. He also pointed out that “the travel industry still operates on data formats designed for humans interacting with websites, not for agents interacting with”
Kögel first launched YGO as a consumer app featuring an AI assistant named Athena to help plan short trips, raising € 2.5 million in August 2024, led by GetAway Group, with contributions from Patrick Andrae and Wolfgang Heigl, the co-founders of HomeToGo, Lucy Capital, Expedite Ventures, and Usbeck. The FlixBus founders also invested at a later stage.
The company is now focusing on suppliers rather than consumers. The founders have experience setting up and expanding travel businesses to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, along with over a decade of work on AI products.
Kögel says the team has expanded to 20 members from the United States, Africa, and Europe, and that the company is headquartered in Berlin.
Offering infrastructure as major players buy AI agents
YGO is aiming to increase the margins available to suppliers. The company points out that online travel agencies and metasearch platforms generally retain 15% to 25% of every booking, but this approach is becoming less sustainable as customers shift from the OTA websites to AI agents.
The major companies are already taking action. On July 31st, Expedia acquired the Berlin-based company Layla, and Booking is currently developing Vayo. Startups such as Odessia, which obtained $6 million from Sequoia, and Mindtrip, which has raised $22.5 million, are creating AI agents for travellers. TFN has also reported on Omio’s entry into AI multimodal travel, Fora’s $1 billion valuation, Odynn’s white-label travel portals for banks, and Entravel’s $7.5 million funding round.
While most of the companies in question concentrate on travelers, YGO deals with suppliers. Kögel noted that AI assistants require information that current suppliers cannot provide.
“An AI needs to know the context of a hotel if it is to make a decision on your behalf,” he said, giving as examples details such as availability, pricing, or nearby points of interest. For instance, a traveler may be looking for a hotel that has a yoga studio within 20 minutes and a heated pool.
The company states that its platform includes more than 5,000 verified facts for each hotel listing and makes this data available to assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
The company has around 10 customers, including large companies such as Condor and Bentour. Some partners use YGO’s content in printed catalogues, while others distribute it via travel agencies and websites.
YGO reports that it has processed over €15 million in bookings and that its annual recurring revenue has reached seven figures within six months. Kögel attributes the company’s rapid advancement to trust and the right team.
The AI sector in the tourism industry is expected to grow from $2.95 billion in 2024 to $13.38 billion by 2030, representing an annual growth rate of 28.7%.
Why Ventech invested
Kögel said the fundraising process had moved faster than he anticipated. “Ventech has proved to be our very best choice to lead this round, and we had more interest than we could accommodate,” he said
‘The travel booking sector is experiencing its most significant structural change in decades, yet most of the industry’s existing infrastructure was not designed for this shift. YGO’s customers have already taken back control of their customer relationships and are now showing real improvements in their key performance indicators to demonstrate this. Which is why we think that YGO’s neutral infrastructure will become essential to the way travel operates in an AI-first world,” said Nicolas Barthalon, a partner at Ventech.
The money will fund sales, go-to-market activities, further development of the AI platform, and turning YGO’s pipeline into confirmed accounts outside the DACH region, with a focus on enterprises and mid-sized travel companies. YGO is expanding across Europe and is currently negotiating with travel brands worldwide.
The key question remains which agents will earn user trust. Assistants determine recommendations and may favour those with the most accurate data or highest transaction values. According to YGO, providing neutral infrastructure is more valuable than controlling the consumer interface, while Booking and Expedia invest in customer-facing solutions.
