YGO's $8.7M Bet: Making Travel Inventory Bookable by AI

Jan de Vries · 2026-10-21

YGO, a Berlin-based startup, just raised €8 million (about $8.7 million) in a Series A round. That's a big vote of confidence for a company that's only two years old. But what exactly does YGO do? And why are investors so excited? ### The Problem: Travel Booking Is Stuck in the Past Online travel booking is undergoing its biggest structural shift in decades. But most of the industry's infrastructure was never built for it. That's according to Nicolas Barthalon, Partner at Ventech, who led the round. He believes YGO's neutral infrastructure will become critical to how travel operates in an AI-first world. Here's the thing: online travel agencies and metasearch platforms have been taking a 15-25% cut of every booking. They act as middlemen between travelers and suppliers. But with AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini becoming the starting point for travel planning, suppliers are looking for ways to reclaim direct relationships with their customers. ### How YGO Bridges the Gap 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—tour operators, online travel agencies, and travel agencies—directly with airlines, hotels, and tour operator inventory. And it does this without requiring them to restructure their existing booking infrastructure. So how does it work? YGO structures and enriches fragmented hotel and product data. This gives it the depth and accuracy that AI agents need to reliably discover, compare, and recommend travel products. The platform has three main products: - **Content Enrichment:** 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). - **Hotel Q&A:** Embeds an AI-powered question-and-answer layer directly onto hotel pages. Travelers can ask any question and get verified answers in real time, in their own language. - **AI Distribution:** Makes a travel company's entire hotel portfolio accessible and bookable through AI agents like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. > "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." – Julian Kögel, co-founder and CEO of YGO ### Traction and Future Plans YGO is already processing bookings for major European travel players like Condor, Bentour, and GetAway Group. The results speak for themselves: one airline client saw a 90% reduction in manual operations and a 20% improvement in conversion. Another client increased average order value by 2.4x with no additional headcount. And the company's growth is impressive. YGO has grown its recurring ARR into seven figures within six months and has processed more than €15 million (about $16.3 million) in bookings through its infrastructure to date. The fresh capital will be used to scale go-to-market and sales operations, deepen its AI orchestration platform, and expand beyond the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). The target? 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. With AI set to revolutionize how we plan and book travel, YGO is positioning itself as the backbone that makes it all work. And investors are betting big that they're right.