PALO ALTO, Calif. — The business travel and expense solution Navan® is expanding further into the exhibitions space with its acquisition of BoomPop, an AI-powered event planning and management platform.
In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Navan said the transaction could be worth up to $95 million in cash and shares of Navan Class A common stock, subject to customary purchase price adjustments.
The deal brings BoomPop’s venue sourcing, room-block, contracting and payment capabilities into Navan’s platform, connecting event planning with business travel, expenses and payments.
This follows a partnership announced in February that integrated BoomPop technology into Navan’s Advanced Meetings & Events offering.
“Trade shows bring together all the complexity of a major event — the venue, room blocks, travel, budgets and hundreds or even thousands of individual attendee journeys,” stated Galen Grady, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Meetings and Events at Navan. “Bringing BoomPop into the platform will help us build on that — giving organizers one place to manage all those moving pieces, instead of stitching everything together manually.”
For trade show and conference organizers, the combination could provide greater connectivity between functions that have traditionally operated separately. Room blocks, attendee travel and event spending can live in different systems, making it difficult to get a complete picture of an event’s costs and attendee travel patterns.
At the time the partnership was announced, Navan said it had facilitated nearly 85,000 events through its self-service group travel offering, including 30,000 in 2025. Venue sourcing and room-block management, however, remained largely manual, a gap the BoomPop integration was designed to address.
BoomPop, founded in 2023, has supported events for approximately 250,000 attendees for companies including Accenture, Amazon, Google, Salesforce and Shopify.
For Navan, the acquisition opens the door to more meetings and events spending that traditionally sits outside managed corporate travel programs. The company estimates meetings and events represent approximately 30% of corporate travel spending, with more than half of that spending remaining unmanaged.
Related. Grip Turns Digital Connections into Real-World Return on Event Investment
BoomPop’s platform uses AI throughout the planning process and can help organizers identify destinations and venues, manage RFPs and room blocks, and consolidate event costs.
Navan’s venue sourcing capabilities extend to more than 500,000 properties worldwide.
BoomPop says its technology can make event planning 3.5 times faster, based on a comparison of hotel response times with industry averages. Its AI Event Agent can also assist with venue sourcing and negotiating supplier costs for items including food and beverage, Wi-Fi and transfers.
“We built BoomPop to make work functions less work, and our partnership with Navan showed us how much bigger that idea gets when travel and events live together,” Former BoomPop Co-Founder and CEO and current Senior Vice President, Special Initiatives at Navan Healey Cypher stated.
The acquisition also continues Navan’s expansion through M&A. Previous acquisitions include Reed & Mackay, Comtravo, Tripeur and Brazilian travel management company Smartrips.
Navan announced the BoomPop deal alongside its second-quarter fiscal 2027 results.
The company reported $232.8 million in quarterly revenue, up 35% year over year, while gross booking volume increased 45% to a record $3 billion.
To get more events industry news, subscribe to TSE’s free e-newsletter on LinkedIn or through your email.