Perspectives on the future of travel & technology.

PhocusWire has named Thayer Investment Partners the #1 investor in travel tech for 2026 — marking the third consecutive year we have led the ranking, and the fourth straight edition in which we have been featured. We are the only firm to appear in every edition of the list since PhocusWire began publishing it.

The annual ranking measures the investors most active in, and most committed to, the travel and hospitality technology ecosystem. PhocusWire's methodology focuses on firms that deployed capital into at least three travel companies between May 2025 and May 2026, and/or those with a stated, specific focus on the sector — a deliberately narrow lens that filters out tourists from the asset class and recognizes the operators who keep showing up.

“Thayer tops the list for three years running and is the only firm to appear in all four editions — demonstrating remarkable conviction in travel through every twist of the market.”

— PhocusWire, 2026

That conviction is the point. Travel and hospitality have absorbed more than their share of macro shocks in the last several years — inbound demand swings, AI platform shifts, capital cycles tightening and loosening — and the firms that built positions through those cycles are the ones whose portfolios are now compounding fastest. We have spent more than a decade backing founders who are rebuilding the operational and commercial layers of this industry, and we have done it from the same seat, with the same thesis, every year.

The 2026 list also highlights a notable new entrant: United Airlines Ventures joined the most active investors with a series of AI-focused bets across trip planning, voice and operations. We read that as a constructive signal. The largest operators in travel are now deploying capital alongside the specialist funds — a sign that the AI-native rebuild of travel infrastructure is no longer an emerging thesis but the central one.

We are grateful to PhocusWire for the recognition, and to the founders, LPs, co-investors, and operators who make this work possible. The ranking belongs to them as much as it does to us.

Thayer Investment Partners is pleased to share that JetStream has emerged from stealth with a $34 million seed round, led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from the CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and a roster of cybersecurity luminaries including George Kurtz (CrowdStrike), Assaf Rappaport (Wiz), and Frederic Kerrest (Okta). The round was massively over-subscribed and closed in a matter of weeks.

JetStream was founded by veteran security operators from CrowdStrike, Dazz, SentinelOne, Cohesity, McAfee, and Attivo Networks. The company's mission is to accelerate enterprise AI adoption by delivering a governance-grade inspection and control layer that helps enterprises see, understand, and manage how agents operate across the organization — establishing identity governance and controls for virtual workforces while maintaining agent-level cost controls without slowing innovation.

“Every enterprise deploying agentic AI eventually runs into the same wall: they cannot see what their agents are doing, what data they are touching, or how to control them at scale. JetStream is building the operating system for that problem.”

— Thayer Investment Partners

At the core of the platform is JetStream AI Blueprints™ — dynamic, system-generated graphs that map the relationships among agents, the models they use, the data they access, the tools they call, and the identities behind every action. JetStream is already working with Fortune 500 organizations and is hiring aggressively across engineering, product, and go-to-market.

For Thayer, JetStream represents a category-defining bet on the infrastructure layer beneath the agentic enterprise. Our portfolio is increasingly populated by AI-native companies — in hospitality, travel, mobility, and adjacent verticals — whose products depend on agents acting safely on behalf of real businesses and real guests. A governance layer like JetStream's is not optional infrastructure for that future; it is foundational. We are excited to support a team this senior, this technical, and this commercially proven as they bring governance to enterprise AI.

Thayer Investment Partners is pleased to announce its participation in Slang AI's $36 million Series B financing, led by US Venture Partners (USVP). The round — $28 million in equity and $8 million in debt — brings Slang AI's total funding to $68 million and includes participation from former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, alongside existing investors Homebrew, Stage 2 Capital, Active Capital, Wing VC, Collide Capital, and Underscore VC.

Founded in 2019 by Alex Sambvani and Gabe Duncan, Slang AI is the agentic voice platform purpose-built for hospitality. It answers every inbound guest call with precision, warmth, and professionalism — automating reservations, private dining, catering requests, and general inquiries while integrating directly with OpenTable, SevenRooms, Tripleseat, and Yelp. The platform now serves more than 2,000 restaurant locations including Texas de Brazil, Carmines, Riot Hospitality Group, and Dineamic Hospitality.

“Slang AI has built a powerful competitive advantage with a dataset of more than 25 million customer calls from 10 million unique guests. That depth of real-world hospitality interaction is what makes the platform feel like a true superhost — and it's why we doubled down in this round.”

— Thayer Investment Partners

Slang AI will use the new capital to deepen its AI capabilities, build multi-modal experiences that extend beyond voice, and expand into new parts of the guest journey — from personalized recommendations to post-visit follow-up and reviews — that drive measurable revenue and engagement for hospitality operators.

The phone is still the single highest-intent channel for restaurants and hotels, and yet it has been one of the last surfaces to receive a modern AI treatment. Slang AI is changing that, and at scale. With 95%+ guest satisfaction and a clear path from restaurants into hotels and broader venues, the company sits squarely at the intersection of two trends Thayer has invested behind for more than a decade: vertical AI built for hospitality, and software that converts missed operational moments into recovered revenue.

We are proud to continue supporting Alex, Gabe, and the Slang AI team as they scale guest communications across every restaurant — and beyond.