Hopper, the mobile travel booking startup and app that lets users book flights, hotels, cars, and — most recently — short-term home rentals a la Airbnb and VRBO, has been on a fast pace of growth in the wake of Covid-19 travel restrictions loosening up in the last year, with 70 million downloads to date and $2 billion+ in travel sales last year. Now the company is gearing up for its next steps.
TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company has raised $35 million in a secondary share sale that values the company at $5 billion. For some context, the Canadian startup was valued at a little over $3.5 billion just five months ago, when it raised $175 million in a Series G round of funding. The secondary sale, a source said, was aimed at employees, giving them some liquidity “so they don’t have to wait for a potential IPO.” Buyers of the shares included Drive Capital, Stack Capital Group (which independently also announced of its part in the investment) and existing investors. (That list includes Goldman Sachs, Inovia Capital, Omers, Citi, and others.