UK hospitality startup Lighthouse enters unicorn club with $370M raise

London-based startup Lighthouse just raised a hefty $370mn from American investment giant KKR at a valuation of over $1bn, making it Europe’s latest unicorn tech company.

The funding will supercharge the company’s ambitions to shake up the $15bn travel tech market. What’s on the to-do list? Refining its AI tools, expanding globally, and snapping up competitors through mergers and acquisitions (it has already made four).

Lighthouse’s platform crunches over 400 terabytes of travel data every day, using AI to turn that ocean of info into bite-sized insights that help hotels make better business decisions. It includes data like how many people are booking rooms, when they’re booking, what they’re willing to pay, and how hotels compare to others in the same area. This data helps businesses understand the market, predict trends, and make decisions to increase bookings and revenue.

The startup says its tools are used by over 70,000 hospitality providers in 185 countries, including big names like Holiday Inn, Radisson, and NH Hotel Group. It has more than 700 employees worldwide. 

CEO Sean Fitzpatrick is pumped about what’s next. “I couldn’t be more energized by what we’re working towards. We’re just getting started in making hospitality data and tools more powerful, accessible, and affordable,” he said, adding that KKR’s investment will boost AI capabilities, pull in new data sets, and push the company deeper into the global market.

Gino Engels and Matthias Geeroms founded Lighthouse in 2012. The company was originally called OTA Insight and started in Ghent, Belgium, before moving its HQ to London. Now, it has raised one of the largest rounds for any startup based in the British capital.

For KKR, this is another notch in a long belt of tech growth bets. Since 2010, the firm has funnelled around $23bn into the sector. Stephen Shanley, KKR’s head of tech growth in Europe, called Lighthouse “the leading platform in this space,” praising its ability to serve everyone from boutique inns to multinational hotel chains.

Back in 2021, Lighthouse raised $80mn in a Series B, with backers like Spectrum Equity and F-Prime Capital sticking around for this latest buy-in.