Fora raises $60 million at $1 billion valuation for travel advisor platform

Fora has raised a $60 million Series D at a $1 billion post-money valuation, led by Forerunner Ventures and Tactile Ventures. The financing gives the New York travel advisor platform unicorn status as it tries to scale a human-led booking model in a sector increasingly funded around AI automation.

Returning investors Thrive Capital, Insight Partners and Heartcore Capital also participated. New backers include PLUS Capital, BlackPines Capital Partners and Tribeca Venture Partners, along with Amy Schumer and other members of PLUS Capital’s artist and athlete network. Fora said the round brings total funding to $138.5 million. Revenue was not disclosed.

Founded in 2021 by Henley Vazquez, Evan Frank and Jake Peters, Fora provides training, supplier access, booking infrastructure and software for independent travel advisors. The company says its advisors have booked more than $3 billion in travel since launch. According to Fora, the first $1 billion took three years, while the third $1 billion took five months.

The company’s pitch is that the travel advisor job can be opened to people outside the traditional agency system. Fora says it now has more than 15,000 active advisors, and that 97% had not previously worked in travel. The advisor base is majority women and includes former physicians, lawyers, full-time parents and retirees, according to the company.

From niche agency work to a platform model

Vazquez’s path into the sector was not through a family travel business or inherited hotel relationships. She grew up on a 550-acre farm in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, later attended Princeton and worked at Town & Country magazine. She then joined the founding team at Indagare, a members-only boutique travel company, where she learned the operating side of luxury travel advising.

In 2014, while raising two young children, Vazquez started Passported, a Virtuoso agency aimed at family travel. She has said the industry’s structure made it difficult for outsiders to enter, citing high startup hurdles, older tools, slow payment cycles and limited flexibility for people with other work or caregiving obligations.

“What I kept coming back to was a mismatch. There were so many people who would have been extraordinary travel advisors, but the industry just wasn’t built to welcome them in,” Vazquez said.

Frank previously co-founded onefinestay, the luxury home-sharing company acquired by AccorHotels in 2016 for about $169 million. Peters is Fora’s chief product and technology officer.

AI is a tool in Fora’s model, not the whole product

Fora plans to use the new capital to expand Via, its AI assistant, beyond its current beta users. The company says Via helps advisors draft itineraries and handle other planning work. Fora also plans to put money into new markets and into cruises, flights and enterprise travel.

The AI positioning needs scrutiny, as it does across travel tech. Fora is not claiming to remove advisors from the process. Its argument is that AI can make a large independent advisor network more productive. Brian O’Malley, founder and managing partner of Tactile Ventures, put the comparison more aggressively: “Fora has more revenue than all AI travel companies, combined.” The company did not provide revenue figures to support that claim.

Forerunner has backed Fora since its $5 million seed round in 2021. Tactile’s O’Malley first invested in the company while at Forerunner, then backed it again after founding Tactile in 2024.

The broader market remains large enough to attract both advisor-led and software-led approaches. Grand View Research valued the online travel market at $713 billion in 2025 and forecasts a 7.4% compound annual growth rate through 2035. LinkedIn ranked travel advisor as the fifth-fastest-growing job in the U.S. in 2025. Fora’s new round is a bet that a larger advisor supply, rather than a fully automated booking flow, can still capture meaningful travel spend.

This story draws on original reporting from TechFundingNews.