Hopper, a Canada-based airfare and accommodation booking portal backed by financial services firm Citi, has raised $70m in a funding round led by venture capital firm Westcap, The Logic has reported.
The government-owned Business Development of Canada (BDC), pension fund managers Omers and Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec (CDPQ), enterprise promotion board Investissement Québec and venture capital firm Inovia Capital also took part in the round.
The capital was secured at the same valuation as Hopper’s $100m series D round in late 2018, which valued it at $750m according to Bloomberg.
Founded in 2007, Hopper has developed a machine learning-equipped mobile app that predicts air travel and hotel prices as far as one year in advance in order to help customers secure the best prices when they book.
The company has more than 30 million registered users and although it said it has quadrupled headcount since the series D round, it is cutting staff as coronavirus restrictions cause travel to be severely truncated worldwide. It has now raised approximately $265m in funding altogether.
The 2018 round included Citi subsidiary Citi Ventures. It was led by Omers’ VC arm, Omers Ventures, and included fellow returning investors CDPQ, BDC Capital IT Venture Fund, Investissement Québec, Accomplice and Brightspark Ventures.