YGO raises €8 million Series A for AI travel infrastructure

Berlin-based startup YGO has raised €8 million in a Series A funding round. The company, founded in 2023 by Julian Kögel, Sebastian Kreutzberger, and Willi Ibbeken, achieved seven-figure annual recurring revenue within six months of launch and has processed more than €15 million in bookings through its platform to date.

YGO sits at the intersection of legacy travel technology and the emerging ecosystem of AI agents. The company aims to address a structural shift in an industry where online travel agencies and metasearch platforms capture 15-25% of every booking. Its platform is designed to make travel inventory directly bookable through AI, increasing margins for suppliers by enabling direct connections.

AI-powered travel infrastructure

YGO's platform connects travel companies directly with airlines, hotels, and tour operator inventory without requiring them to restructure their existing booking infrastructure. It structures and enriches fragmented hotel and product data to provide the depth and accuracy needed for AI agents to function effectively.

The company's content enrichment product automatically generates verified, structured hotel data, delivering it via the Model Context Protocol. Its platform includes more than 5,000 verified facts for each hotel listing. A separate Hotel Q&A product embeds an AI-powered question-and-answer layer on hotel pages to provide real-time, multilingual answers.

YGO's AI Distribution product makes a travel company's entire hotel portfolio accessible and bookable through AI agents. This makes hotel data directly accessible to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.

Proven impact with travel partners

YGO has delivered measurable efficiency gains and revenue growth for its clients, which include major European travel players like Condor, Bentour, and GetAway Group. In one collaboration with an airline client, YGO's technology led to a 90% reduction in manual operations and a 20% improvement in conversion rates.

Work with another client resulted in a 2.4x increase in average order value without requiring any additional headcount. These results demonstrate the platform's ability to drive both operational efficiency and direct revenue growth for travel companies.

Expansion plans and market opportunity

The fresh capital will be used to scale YGO's go-to-market and sales operations, deepen its AI orchestration platform, and expand its reach beyond the DACH region. The company is actively negotiating with travel brands worldwide and targets both enterprise accounts and mid-sized travel companies.

YGO's expansion is timed to capture a significant share of a rapidly growing market. The AI sector in tourism is projected to grow from $2.95 billion in 2024 to $13.38 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of 28.7%. The company, headquartered in Berlin, currently has 20 employees from the United States, Africa, and Europe.

YGO will use the new capital to scale its go-to-market and sales operations while expanding its AI orchestration platform beyond the DACH region.