AI-powered travel agency Fora reaches unicorn status, raises $60 million

Travel agency immediately Announced a $60 million Series D round Led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures, the company is valued at $1 billion.

Forumsfounded in 2021, is a two-part platform: it allows people to easily become travel agents by providing the infrastructure to support customer communications and travel planning; It also allows users to find and connect with advisors while planning trips for occasions like honeymoons or family trips to destinations like Costa Rica or Thailand. Other investors in this latest round include Insight Partners and Thrive Capital. The company said it has raised $138.5 million in funding so far.

A portion of the new capital will go toward expanding Fora’s AI assistant, Via, which helps travel agents on its platform with tedious administrative tasks like searching and building itineraries. The hope is that human travel agents using the platform instead will be able to spend more time building relationships with customers, and that using Fora’s AI will help with human productivity rather than trying to replace it.

Flora said that since its launch, agents on the platform have booked more than $3 billion worth of travel, and the majority of its agent users were new to providing travel advice. The company also hopes to use the funds to hire and grow in other travel categories, such as cruises and flights.