Berlin-based YGO raises €8 million to make travel inventory bookable through AI agents
YGO, a Berlin-based startup building an AI infrastructure layer for the travel industry, raised €8 million in a Series A round.
The round was led by Ventech, with participation from Sake Bosch, Caesar Capital and Business Angels. In August 2024, the company announced it had secured €2.5 million in funding led by GetAway Group.
“Online travel booking is undergoing its biggest structural shift in decades but most of the industry’s infrastructure was never built for it. YGO’s customers are already re-owning their customer relationships with AI and putting real KPI uplifts on the board to prove it. That’s why we believe YGO’s neutral infrastructure will become critical to how travel operates in an AI-first world,” said Nicolas Barthalon, Partner at Ventech.
Founded in 2023 by Julian Kögel, Sebastian Kreutzberger, and Willi Ibbeken, YGO sits at the intersection of legacy travel technology and the emerging ecosystem of AI agents. The company’s platform connects travel companies, including tour operators, online travel agencies, and travel agencies, directly with airlines, hotels, and tour operator inventory, without the need to restructure their existing booking infrastructure.
YGO does this by structuring and enriching fragmented hotel and product data, giving it the depth and accuracy that AI agents need to reliably discover, compare and recommend travel products. Its content enrichment product automatically generates verified, structured hotel data and delivers it across a company’s own digital channels and to external AI assistants via MCP (Model Context Protocol).
Its Hotel Q&A product embeds an AI-powered question-and-answer layer directly onto hotel pages, allowing travellers to ask any question and receive verified answers in real time and in their own language. Its AI Distribution product, on the other hand, makes a travel company’s entire hotel portfolio accessible and bookable through AI agents such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
YGO says online travel agencies and metasearch platforms have captured 15-25% of every booking, acting as intermediaries between travellers and suppliers. With AI assistants becoming the starting point for travel planning and booking, suppliers are looking for ways to reclaim direct relationships with their customers.
The platform already processes bookings for major European travel players including Condor, Bentour, and GetAway Group. YGO says their collaboration has led to a 90% reduction in manual operations and a 20% improvement in conversion for one airline client, and a 2.4x increase in average order value with no additional headcount for another.
“Travel is one of the last major industries still built on infrastructure that was never designed for an AI-first world. We built YGO to change that: to give the travel industry the infrastructure to make its inventory accessible, bookable and ready for AI – whether through their own platforms or through external AI agents,” said Kögel, co-founder and CEO of YGO.
YGO has grown its recurring ARR into seven figures within six months and has processed more than €15 million in bookings through its infrastructure to date. The fresh capital will be utilised to scale go-to-market and sales operations, deepen its AI orchestration platform, and expand the company’s customer base beyond the DACH region, targeting both enterprise accounts and mid-sized travel companies.
“This funding allows us to build on the strong business we already have with some of Europe’s leading travel players and become the AI infrastructure layer connecting the industry to the next generation of travel,” added Kögel.
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