Collaborative AI platform Mobi is exiting stealth mode in the travel industry and actively looking to work with more partners.
Mobi, a B2B platform, has been in travel for the past 10 years, implementing projects for brands like TUI, American Express and the Singapore Tourism Board. The company in 2021 had a $21.6 million Series A funding round, providing it with resources to scale globally, led by Fyrfly Venture Partners with investment from RPM Ventures, Enterprise Holdings, Henry Ford III and Frontier Venture Capital.
“We are excited to be out of stealth in travel and starting to let companies learn about us and show up if they think what we’re doing is helpful or interesting or would be worthwhile to them,” CEO Anna Jaffe said in an interview. “So far, we’ve been very strategic about who we’ve approached and who we’ve worked with, and I think there’s a huge opportunity in travel to grow a really special business and a large number of really special relationships with partners.”
Mobi’s platform is multifunctional with uses ranging from process automation to fleet efficiency. Initially, Jaffee said, she started the company to solve large-scale planning problems, for which AI is particularly apt.
Built upon a number of core capabilities, Mobi has three solutions for the end user. One is a self-service travel portal. One is a concierge-facing experience. The third is a travel agent-facing experience.
“We believe in the immense potential of AI, particularly in the travel and tourism industry, which accounts for up to 10% of the global economy,” said Julie Maples, general partner at Fyrfly Venture Partners. “Mobi’s convergence of AI and tourism is visionary, and we are proud to support a female-founded company with a mission to drive innovation in this space.”
Mobi’s travel agent-facing experience has seen the most traction, Jaffee said. The platform helps agents track and understand client preferences while providing detailed contextual information on destinations.
The experience also has a user-facing interface, so travelers can be brought into the fold with their plans and share feedback with agents. Mobi’s technology also enables travelers to make changes to plans on their own.
The travel agent-facing experience has not launched as a generally available tool, but Mobi is interested in working with more travel companies, from suppliers to financial institutions and beyond, now that it has exited stealth mode.
Pricing ranges depending on use case. Jaffe said Mobi isn’t a typical, out-of-the-box white-label solution, but offers a more collaborative partnership to create a bespoke experience for partners.
Why Mobi chose travel
Travel was an attractive space because it is relatively consolidated, Jaffee said, with a limited number of players in its verticals, ranging from air to hotel to corporate travel.
“It’s a world where we, as a B2B technology company, could build a relatively small number of relationships and basically touch almost everyone who travels,” Jaffe said. “And that was compelling to us.”
Travel also encompasses one of the world’s hardest planning problems, she said, and Mobi has built a core planning capability that specializes in understanding who a user is, parsing their preferences and turning that information into recommendations and travel plans.
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