British hospitality startup Lighthouse joins the unicorn membership with a $370 million donation

London-based startup Lighthouse has just raised a whopping $370 million from American investment giant KKR at a valuation of over $1 billion, making it Europe's newest unicorn tech company.

The funding will boost the company's ambitions to disrupt the $15 billion travel technology market. What's on the to-do list? Refining its AI tools, expanding globally, and taking on the competition through mergers and acquisitions (the company has already done four).

Lighthouse's platform processes over 400 terabytes of travel data daily and uses AI to transform this ocean of information into bite-sized insights that help hotels make better business decisions. This includes data such as the number of people booking rooms, when they book, what they are willing to pay, and how hotels compare to other hotels in the same area. This data helps companies understand the market, predict trends, and make decisions to increase bookings and revenue.

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

CEO Sean Fitzpatrick is excited about what's next. “I couldn’t be more energized about what we’re working toward. We are just beginning to make hotel data and tools more powerful, accessible and affordable,” he said, adding that KKR’s investment will increase AI capabilities, incorporate new data sets and push the company deeper into the global market .

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

For KKR, this is another step in a long line of bets on tech growth. Since 2010, the company has poured around $23 billion into the sector. Stephen Shanley, KKR's head of technology growth in Europe, called Lighthouse “the leading platform in this space” and praised its ability to serve everyone from boutique inns to multinational hotel chains.

In 2021, Lighthouse raised $80 million in a Series B, with backers including Spectrum Equity and F-Prime Capital joining in this latest buy-in.