Two specialists of Meetings & Events spend management and venue sourcing, one global ambition: give companies procurement control over the last major category of spend that nobody fully manages, whilst delivering the white glove service in venue sourcing that booking communities expect.
London / Paris, 27 October 2026: Naboo today announces its maiden acquisition of pro-ven, with the two companies joining forces to build the global category leader in Meetings & Events (M&E) spend management and venue sourcing.
pro-ven, based in the UK and established in 2005, is a recognised M&E player, managing M&E spend for leading UK, European and Global companies and associations. Its expertise sits at the crossroads of event planning and procurement: sourcing venues and suppliers, negotiating preferred rates and T&Cs, managing complex approval workflows, centralising invoicing and payments (with specific expertise in lodge card management) and giving procurement full visibility over M&E spend.
Naboo is a global M&E spend management company, operating from its 8 offices across the world (New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Hamburg, Barcelona, London and Singapore), built on a strong AI and Fintech backbone. AI reinforces the quality of sourcing, the value of savings and the review of T&Cs, while the Fintech core automates custom invoicing and payment processing anywhere in the world: clients pay on their own terms, in their own currency, and vendors are paid instantly the moment the purchase order is issued.
The acquisition caps a period of rapid momentum for Naboo. In October, the company unveiled a new brand identity and positioning built around bringing event organisers, procurement and finance teams together on a single platform, with AI that saves clients an average of 12% per event. In September, Naboo opened its first Asia-Pacific office in Singapore, serving clients in Singapore and Australia in response to demand from existing global clients including Arkema, Veolia and AXA.
pro-ven brings client trust and relationship depth with complex enterprise accounts in the UK and beyond - Naboo brings the scale and technology. With pro-ven at its side, Naboo now manages $300M worth of meetings and events worldwide, making it the largest pure player in M&E Spend Management and venue sourcing.
pro-ven becomes Naboo's headquarters in the UK, reinforcing its local presence with great talents and customers, and accelerating its growth and ambition in the UK.
"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," says Julian Laxon, founder and MD of pro-ven, who will continue in his role to help Naboo build its presence across the UK.
From day one, pro-ven clients benefit from extended global geographic coverage and a cutting-edge software experience, with the same team and terms they know and trust. And that team is now equipped with Naboo's AI Operating System, dramatically boosting its productivity and allowing it to focus even more on client relationships and service.
"With Naboo, we are now able to address our clients’ needs for global coverage with equal quality, anywhere in the world," adds Julian Laxon. "This is the direction our clients’ booking communities and procurement leads are clearly taking: one single vendor of record, anywhere in the world, to cover all the complex elements of venue find, event management and payment."
"We are a service company," says Maxime Eduardo, founder and CEO of Naboo. "Service-as-a-software: it means our software absorbs the operational complexity - the admin, the workflows, the manual steps - so our talents can spend their time on what actually matters: the relationship. All of our talents are now dedicated to customer and partner relationships, offering a white-glove experience, including for the smallest bookings."
This is the promise Naboo now makes to every customer, in every country: Every event. One vendor. Full service. No minimum.
A market undergoing a major transformation
Corporate meetings and events is an estimated $400bn category and the last major area of enterprise spend still largely managed as it was in the 1990s, through local agencies, email exchanges, spreadsheets and thousands of one-off suppliers. This is because those who plan events, such as executive assistants and event managers, and those who pay for them, in procurement and finance, have traditionally operated in separate silos, with few tools designed to serve both.
Today, the M&E market is being reshaped by two major forces:
- Procurement wants to take control and gain visibility over this category: the last significant unmanaged category of corporate spend, after Travel, Fleet, Expenses, IT and professional services.
- AI makes it economical and profitable to manage source-to-contract at scale, delivering significant value and savings, including on the long tail of meetings & events that used to fly under the radar.
Major players in the industry are actively trying to consolidate the market and invest in AI capabilities. Amex GBT was recently acquired by Long Lake to finally equip the TMC with technology. Navan acquired Reed & Mackay and recently partnered with BoomPop.
Naboo has the means to lead this race. The scale-up raised a $70M round in early 2026 from Lightspeed Venture Partners, a prominent investor in AI companies such as Anthropic and Mistral, and in Navan itself.
"The future category leader in the M&E spend management market will be a pure player," says Maxime Eduardo, founder and CEO of Naboo. "Both event planners and procurement leaders have very high expectations in terms of user experience, embedded compliance, payment simplification, spend analytics and transparency. It cannot be achieved as a side business by TMCs who are still very much focused on transforming the transient travel experience. Together with pro-ven, that is the leader we are building."
For event organisers, this changes everything: they stop being suspects in the eyes of procurement and finance and become heroes for their teams, with the admin taken off their desk so the ambition stays on it. For procurement and finance, the category finally becomes visible, compliant and negotiated.
Together, Naboo and pro-ven now offer companies one vendor for every meeting and event, anywhere in the world, with the same white-glove service on every booking.
About Naboo
Founded in 2022 by Maxime Eduardo, Antoine Servant, Lucien Bredin and Jean-Louis Villeminot, Naboo is a global Meetings & Events spend management platform built on a strong AI and fintech backbone. With 280 employees across eight offices (New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Hamburg, Barcelona, London and Singapore), Naboo works with a quarter of France’s CAC 40 companies on exclusive contracts, as well as global companies such as Google, Siemens, Meta and Microsoft. Naboo has raised $100m over the past three years from investors including Notion Capital (UK), ISAI and Ternel (France), and, in 2026, Lightspeed Venture Partners (US).
About pro-ven
Founded in 2005 and based in the UK, pro-ven is a Meetings & Events specialist managing M&E spend for leading UK, European and global companies and associations. Its services span venue and supplier sourcing, rate and T&C negotiation, approval workflows, centralised invoicing and payments, and lodge card management. www.pro-ven.com