So Navan finally went public in Q4’25. After years of confidential filings, pushed timelines, and a rebrand from TripActions, they rang the bell on October 30th, 2025.
And then the stock dropped 20% on Day One.
Today? It’s trading around $17. That’s 32% below the $25 IPO price. The company that was once valued at $9.2 billion in the private markets, that once dreamed of a $12 billion IPO, now sits at roughly a $4 billion market cap — at $800M ARR, growing almost 30%.
Navan may may be but Cursor but it is a great company. $800M in ARR. Growing 28-29%. 71% gross margins. 40% growth in Gross Booking Volume. 97% CSAT. 10,000+ customers including Unilever, Adobe, and OpenAI. An AI assistant (Ava) now handling 54% of customer interactions.
This isn’t a broken business. This is a legitimate B2B and SaaS category leader.
And yet.
The Math Is Sobering
At ~$4B market cap and ~$800M ARR and $685M in revenue, Navan is trading at roughly 5-6x revenue and 4x ARR.
For context:
- The median public SaaS multiple in 2025 is around 6-7x ARR
- High-growth AI infrastructure plays are commanding 20-40x+ (see: CoreWeave)
- Peak 2021 SaaS multiples hit 18-20x ARR
Navan isn’t getting punished because it’s bad. It’s getting the “good but not AI” discount.
Even a16z Is Buying the Dip
Here’s something interesting: Andreessen Horowitz has been aggressively buying Navan shares on the open market.
Between December 17-29, a16z funds purchased over 1.7 million shares worth approximately $25+ million at prices ranging from $12.65 to $16.16 per share — well below the $25 IPO price.
Ben Horowitz personally filed matching purchases across the same dates, increasing his reported ownership to over 7.3 million shares.
When one of the most sophisticated tech investors in the world is buying your stock on the open market after a 50% drawdown, it tells you something. Either they see a massive opportunity… or they’re averaging down on a position they can’t exit.
I think it’s the former. But even a16z’s vote of confidence hasn’t been enough to move the stock back anywhere close to IPO levels.
That’s how hard it is to be a non-AI B2B company right now. Even one with a very successful AI copilot.
What Navan’s Latest Numbers Actually Show
Let’s look at their first earnings report as a public company (December 15, 2025):
- Q3 Revenue: $195M, up 29% YoY, so almost $800M ARR
- Gross Booking Volume: $2.6B, up 40% YoY
- Gross Margin: 71%
- Non-GAAP Operating Income: $25M (13% margin) — they’re actually non-GAAP profitable!
- Non-GAAP Operating Margin Expansion: 870 basis points YoY
- CSAT: 97%
- NPS: 45
FY26 Guidance: $685-687M revenue (28% growth), $21-22M non-GAAP operating income
These are legitimately strong numbers. Growing almost 30% at scale, with improving margins, high customer satisfaction, and a path to profitability.
But the stock cratered 15%+ after earnings anyway. Why? The CFO announced her departure, losses on a GAAP basis were still large, and the market continues to question the path to sustainable profitability.
Today There Are Two Categories of B2B Companies
- AI companies — which can do no wrong, can burn billions, can have massive customer concentration, and still see their stocks double after IPO (CoreWeave went from $40 IPO price to $90+ despite Microsoft being 60%+ of revenue and $18B+ in debt)
- Everything else — which needs to be profitable, diversified, efficient, and is still valued like it’s 2016
What Navan Teaches Us About the IPO Market Today
1. The Private-to-Public Haircut Is Real
Navan’s last private round was at $9.2B in October 2022. They IPO’d at a $6.2B valuation. Hit a low of $3.2B in December.
That’s a 65% haircut from peak private valuation.
This isn’t unique to Navan. The days of private markups translating to public market euphoria are over — unless you have “AI” somewhere in your pitch deck that actually matters.
2. 29% Growth + Non-GAAP Profitable = Still “Meh”
Navan is actually non-GAAP profitable now. They’re guiding to 3% non-GAAP operating margin for the full year.
But on a GAAP basis? Still losing money. Q3 GAAP operating margin was -41%. Stock-based comp is still heavy.
In 2021, growth was all that mattered. In 2025, investors want growth and GAAP profitability. Non-GAAP doesn’t cut it anymore.
3. Travel + Fintech + SaaS = Complicated Story
Is Navan a travel company? A fintech? A SaaS platform?
Yes.
92% of revenue is usage-based (travel bookings, card interchange). Only ~8% is true subscription. Gross margins are strong at 71%, but investors struggle to comp this against pure-play SaaS.
When your revenue model is hard to explain, your multiple suffers.
Meanwhile, In AI Land…
Let’s look at CoreWeave for contrast:
- IPO’d March 2025 at $40/share, raised $1.5B
- Day One: Stock barely moved. Many called it a “soft landing”
- Today: Trading at $90+. Up 125%+ from IPO price.
- Revenue multiple: 30-40x forward revenue
- Profitability: Deep in the red
- Customer concentration: 60%+ Microsoft
- Debt: $18B+ and growing
By traditional SaaS metrics, CoreWeave is a far riskier bet than Navan. More debt. More concentration. Less diversification. No path to near-term profitability.
But CoreWeave has three letters that Navan doesn’t: G-P-U.
AI infrastructure is the exception to every rule in 2025. OpenAI can’t go public but needs to? Investors throw money at anything that touches them. Nvidia needs capacity partners? The stocks moon.
CoreWeave isn’t valued like a cloud company. It’s valued like a toll booth on the highway to AGI.
The Reality for 90%+ of B2B Founders
If you’re building:
- CRM software
- Expense management
- HR tech
- Vertical SaaS
- “AI-powered” (but not AI-native) anything
You’re competing for a shrinking slice of investor attention and increasingly compressed multiples.
The SaaS Capital Index shows median public SaaS multiples at 6-7x ARR. That’s “low normal” — back to 2016-2017 levels. And the spread is widening: the top decile commands 15-20x while the bottom quartile trades at 2-4x.
It’s a “rich get richer” market. Simply being a SaaS company is no longer a ticket to premium valuation.
What This Means for Your Company
If you’re thinking about IPO:
Navan waited years. Filed confidentially in 2022. Pushed from 2023 to 2024 to late 2025. And still took a 20% Day One haircut and a 65% drawdown from peak private valuation.
The IPO window is “open” — but only for companies willing to price realistically and accept that public markets don’t care about your last private round valuation.
If you’re raising:
The 2022 valuation you got? Assume it’s the ceiling, not the floor. Down rounds are normalized. Flat rounds are the new “win.”
Unless you’re building AI infrastructure, AI models, or AI agents — in which case, there’s still $260B in dry powder chasing you.
If you’re operating:
Efficiency is everything. GAAP profitability matters again (non-GAAP isn’t enough). Net revenue retention matters again. Customer satisfaction matters again.
Navan has 97% CSAT, 71% gross margins, and is non-GAAP profitable — and still trades at a discount. You need all of those things just to get a fair multiple.
Succeeding, At Scale, But Not AI? Still Tough
Navan isn’t failing. They’re just not AI.
And in 2025, that’s the difference between:
- CoreWeave: +125% from IPO, $70B market cap, “AI Hyperscaler”
- Navan: -32% from IPO, $4B market cap, “really good B2B SaaS”
Both are legitimate businesses. Both serve real enterprise needs. Both have smart teams and real revenue.
But only one gets to break all the rules.
Even when a16z is buying millions of shares on the open market at a 50% discount to IPO, it’s not enough to move the needle.
For the rest of us in B2B?
Grow efficiently. Get to GAAP profitability. Tell a simple story. Accept that 5-7x revenue is the new normal — and that’s actually fine for a real business.
The AI boom will normalize eventually. The companies that survive will be the ones that never needed the hype to begin with.
Just remember: if your company is actually good but doesn’t have “AI” in the headline, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to get half the multiple.
That’s the 2026 B2B reality.
