Canada-based travel booking app developer Hopper collected $100m in a series D round on Wednesday featuring Citi Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of financial services firm Citi.
The round was led by Omers Ventures, the investment arm of pension fund Omers, and included pension fund manager Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), development capital provider Investissement Québec and BDC Capital IT Venture Fund, operated by state-owned Business Development Bank of Canada’s BDC Capital unit.
Venture capital firms Accomplice and Brightspark Ventures also contributed to the round, which valued Hopper at $750m according to Bloomberg.
Founded in 2007, Hopper operates an app enabling users to book cheap flights and accommodation, relying on machine learning to predict future prices and notifying users of price drops. It also uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to generate personalised travel recommendations.
The app has been used to plan more than 75 million trips to date. The series D funding will go to ongoing global expansion efforts, the further development of Hopper’s AI capabilities and plans to double the company’s headcount to about over the next year.
Hopper had previously raised $61.3m in a series C round led by CDPQ in December 2016, with participation from BDC Capital, Omers Ventures, Investissement Québec, Brightspark and Accomplice.
BDC Capital led a $12m round for the company in April 2016 that inclued Omers Ventures, Accomplice and Brightspark, after Omers Ventures had led a $12m series B round in 2012 that also featured Brightspark and Accomplice, then known as Atlas Venture.
Atlas and Brightspark took part in Hopper’s $8m series A round in 2011, after Brightspark had contributed to a $2m seed round in 2007.
