Navan founders pocket $25M each in IPO amid shaky market debut
Co-founders Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig join early backers in cashing out, while shares struggle to hold value after listing.
Despite the stock’s rocky debut, Navan’s IPO created substantial wealth for its early backers. Alongside the 30 million new shares sold by the company for $750 million, another 6.9 million shares worth $173 million were sold by existing shareholders.
Co-founders Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig each sold shares worth around $25 million, while senior employees collectively sold about $15 million. Navan, registered as an American company but with a large Israeli R&D center, employs roughly 3,400 people worldwide.
The biggest winner is Oren Zeev, the Israeli investor known as a one-man venture capital fund, who first backed the company in its early days as TripActions. Zeev held 18% of Navan before the IPO, sold 200,000 shares for $5 million, and now retains 16%, worth roughly $800 million after the post-listing decline. For a brief moment on Thursday, his holdings were worth $1 billion.
Zeev, who operates his fund Zeev Ventures from California, is also an investor in major unicorns such as Houzz and Tipalti. Other large shareholders include Lightspeed Venture Partners (21.4%) and Andreessen Horowitz (11%), both of which also saw significant paper gains from the listing. Zeev and Ben Horowitz sit on Navan’s board of directors.
