Naboo, a meetings and events spend management company founded in Paris, has acquired pro-ven, a UK firm that sources venues and manages event spending for large companies. The deal was announced on October 27, 2026 in a release datelined London and Paris.
The financial terms were not disclosed, Maddyness reported. pro-ven will become Naboo's UK headquarters, and its founder and managing director, Julian Laxon, will stay in his role to help Naboo build its presence in Britain. Naboo said pro-ven's clients would keep the same team and terms, now backed by its software and wider geographic coverage.
Naboo's release calls pro-ven its maiden acquisition, although Maddyness noted that the company bought Bizmeeting, a platform launched by Privateaser, in 2024. With pro-ven, Naboo said it now manages about $300 million worth of meetings and events worldwide.
What pro-ven does
pro-ven was founded in 2005 and trades as Professional Venue Solutions Limited from Tring, Hertfordshire, according to its website. It works where event planning meets procurement: finding venues and suppliers, negotiating rates and contract terms, running approval workflows, centralising invoices and payments, and managing lodge cards.
Its website describes the business as strategic venue finding, covering conference centres, board meetings, training events, historic houses, sports stadiums and overseas venues, as well as group accommodation in the UK and abroad. It says it charges clients no fee for the service.
Clients quoted on the site include Tate & Lyle, OneAdvanced and pladis. OneAdvanced says pro-ven handles about 25 of its events a year. The site also lists contract wins with The Gap Partnership and Travelport, which appointed the firm after a tender. pro-ven has not reported outside funding or its headcount.
“I am incredibly excited for our clients and our team to make such a step into the AI-native world, which I believe is the right technology to create a world leader in the M&E market.”
Why Naboo is buying
Naboo said pro-ven brings long relationships with complex enterprise accounts in the UK and beyond, while Naboo supplies scale and technology. pro-ven's staff will now use what Naboo calls its AI Operating System, which the company said will let them spend more of their time on client relationships.
"With Naboo, we are now able to address our clients’ needs for global coverage with equal quality, anywhere in the world," Laxon said in the release. He said clients' booking teams and procurement leads wanted one vendor of record to handle venue finding, event management and payment everywhere.
Maxime Eduardo, Naboo's founder and chief executive, described the company as a service business whose software takes on the administrative work. "All of our talents are now dedicated to customer and partner relationships, offering a white-glove experience, including for the smallest bookings," he said.
Naboo's funding and growth
Naboo was founded in 2022 by Eduardo, Antoine Servant, Lucien Bredin and Jean-Louis Villeminot. It has about 280 employees across eight offices in New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Hamburg, Barcelona, London and Singapore, and says it works with a quarter of the companies in France's CAC 40 index, as well as Google, Siemens, Meta and Microsoft.
The company has raised $100 million over the past three years from investors including Notion Capital, ISAI and Ternel, and in 2026 from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lightspeed led a $70 million Series B in February that was aimed at expanding in the US. Maddyness reported that Naboo's revenue was €17 million (about $20 million) in 2025 and that it is targeting $1 billion in business volume in 2027.
The deal follows other recent moves. In September Naboo opened its first Asia-Pacific office in Singapore to serve clients in Singapore and Australia, and in October it launched a new brand identity built around bringing event organisers, procurement and finance teams onto one platform.
A consolidating market
Naboo puts corporate meetings and events at about $400 billion a year and argues it is one of the last large areas of company spending still handled through local agencies, email, spreadsheets and one-off suppliers. It said procurement teams want more control over the category and that AI makes it cheaper to manage sourcing and contracting at scale, including for small events.
Larger travel players are also moving in. The release noted that American Express Global Business Travel had been acquired by Long Lake, and that Navan had bought Reed & Mackay and partnered with BoomPop. Eduardo argued that the eventual leader will be a specialist. "It cannot be achieved as a side business by TMCs who are still very much focused on transforming the transient travel experience," he said, referring to travel management companies. "Together with pro-ven, that is the leader we are building."
