Navan Lays Off 145 Employees to Accelerate Move to Profitability

Corporate travel and expense management startup Navan has laid off 145 people.

The layoffs — 5% of the company’s staff — are part of a restructuring, TechCrunch reported Tuesday (Dec. 5).

“We are refocusing efforts to move faster toward profitability as we enter the next phase of the company,” a Navan spokesperson told the media outlet. “As such, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our global workforce by 5% to increase operational efficiencies as we continue to reinvent travel and expense through innovation.”

The company has recorded strong growth over the past three years, the spokesperson said, per the report.

Navan filed confidentially to go public sometime this year but shifted the target date to April 2024, the report said.

“I think eventually we will be a public company,” Navan CEO and Co-Founder Ariel Cohen told TechCrunch, adding that the company is growing fast but that the market is not right at this time.

Companies sometimes lay off staff as they are planning to go public, aiming to make cost reductions that are viewed favorably by public markets, the report said.

The news of the layoffs comes about a month after Navan and Citi launched a new travel and expense system for Citi Commercial Bank (CCB) cardholders. The system aims to provide a seamless digital experience for CCB cardholders and will initially be available to U.S.-based clients.

“Before Navan Connect, banks were limited to offering their customers disparate travel and payment solutions,” Cohen said when announcing the system. “Today, Navan and Citi are helping to make travel and expense management easy for Citi Commercial Bank clients.”

In another recent development in this space, spend management solution Spendesk announced a new integration with global travel management platform TravelPerk in November, saying business travel and smart spend management “go perfectly hand in hand.”

During the same month, expense management platform Fyle partnered with tax, audit and consulting services firm Sensiba to automate and deliver expense reporting and credit card reconciliation solutions. This partnership enables artificial intelligence (AI) expense management to provide spend insights and more control to finance leaders.