BoomPop, an AI-powered event planning platform, has raised $25 million in equity funding, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
The startup has also secured $16 million of debt and credit via Silicon Valley Bank. The equity portion of the raise was led by Wing VC. Other participants included Atomic, Acme Capital, Four Rivers Group, Thayer Investment Partners (which counts large hotels as LPs), the Fund of Operators Guild, and Gaingels. Several individual investors also wrote checks into the round, including MLB All-Star Alex Rodriguez, former DoorDash President Christopher Payne, and other Silicon Valley founders.
With the latest financing, San Francisco-based BoomPop has raised a total of just under $56 million in funding since its 2020 inception. The company declined to reveal valuation, saying only that it was a “good up round.”
BoomPop started as a research entity called BoomBox during the COVID pandemic, planning virtual events, before transitioning into its current iteration in 2023. It was born out of the Atomic venture studio.
The startup essentially aims to function as a “trusted event planner,” making it easier for companies to plan offsites and events for employees.
“Most people don’t realize that when it comes to corporate travel, almost 60% of it involves groups,” said CEO and co-founder Healey Cypher in an interview. “And most people don’t know that if you need to book more than 10 hotel rooms, you cannot do that online.”
The demand is apparently there. BoomPop said it has more than 450 clients, including Netflix, Google, Dropbox, Hims & Hers and Anaconda, and has seen impressive growth. It ranked No. 115 on the most recent Inc. 5000 list, reporting 3,073% three-year growth. It currently has a revenue run rate of over $75 million. Cypher projects the company should cap just over $100 million in total gross revenue this quarter. (The company makes 12% to 14% of gross for net revenue, he said.)
BoomPop’s raise is one of the largest so far this year for events-related startups, Crunchbase data shows. All told, startups in the category globally have raised just under $252 million year to date, including BoomPop’s funding deal, marking a down year for the sector. That compares with more than $361 million in all of 2024, $435.6 million in 2023 and $2.1 billion in the peak year of 2021.
How it works
BoomPop is powered by AI, but it operates on the premise that “nothing replaces authentic human connection,” Cypher told Crunchbase News.
It works as a companion to employees working to plan offsites or events for a company, with both self-serve and full-service options. For those who want more hand-holding, BoomPop employs a 35-person professional planning team that handles planning and on-site support “for higher end, more complex events,” according to Cypher. Presently, BoomPop has about 110 employees.
A staffer could tell BoomPop that his or her company wants to plan a 100-person founder summit within a three-hour drive from San Francisco with a lot of fun activities. The system would then analyze “millions” of data points in real time, such as weather, hotel and venue pricing, flights, citywide events that might also be taking place, and past itineraries. It would then offer event options, with a range of variations.
Based on preferences, the AI then takes over execution, booking “vetted” vendors, reviewing contracts, building event websites, managing RSVPs and coordinating directly with hotels “to ensure guest preferences — such as dietary restrictions — are met.” The company claims that its AI can accomplish tasks in minutes that “once required entire teams weeks to complete.”
BoomPop’s AI is trained on a proprietary database of curated, vetted vendors, including hotels, spaces, restaurants, activities, facilitators, caterers and photographers.
It can do things like message employees if there’s a last-minute change in dinner venues. It can also get sizes for any swag and compile any dietary restrictions, in addition to planning minute-by-minute itineraries, among other things.
To date, BoomPop has helped book over 60,000 hotel nights for its customers. Its fastest-growing segment is company offsites and retreats.
Interestingly, the startup doesn’t just help plan events for employees. It also helps them plan events for clients.
“I did deep research and found that the number one marketing channel for the scaled AI companies is client events,” Cypher said.
Making group events scaleable
Gaurav Garg, founding partner at Wing Venture Capital, notes that in a post-pandemic world with more remote and hybrid work models, companies are investing more resources into bringing their employees together. But the process behind planning and executing these gatherings “is still painfully manual,” in his view.“BoomPop brings together what used to be a patchwork of tools into a single intelligent product,” he told Crunchbase News via email.
“At Wing, we believe the next generation of enterprise software will be AI-native: deeply intelligent, vertically focused, and obsessed with user experience. BoomPop embodies that thesis perfectly. It’s transforming an outdated, service-heavy industry into a digital, automated ecosystem that’s built for the way modern teams actually work and travel.”
BoomPop makes money in several ways. For one, it charges what Cypher described as a “relatively low” SaaS fee for its offering that allows internal staffers to plan events. It also offers an optional premium product, which acts as a boutique agency to help plan events or offsites, that are billed per attendee, per event. BoomPop primarily makes its money from vendors who pay it a finder’s fee.
In late September, Brex also announced a partnership with BoomPop that allows companies to book private dining and sports suites using Brex points.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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