The travel market continues to transform under the combined effect of artificial intelligence, community platforms and the evolving uses of Millennials and Gen Z. In this context, the Italian startup WeRoad announces a $58 million Series C round led by Airbnb in order to finance its first major expansion outside of Europe, with an entry into the American market.
Historical investors, including H14 which led the series B in 2023, also participated in the operation. This new financing brings the total capital raised by the company to 85 million euros.
Founded in 2017 by Paolo De Nadai, WeRoad is developing a hybrid model between travel platform and social community. The company organizes group trips designed around collective experiences aimed primarily at Millennials and Gen Z. More than 300,000 travelers have already used the platform across more than 1,000 itineraries, facilitated by a network of more than 4,000 coordinators. The company says about 60% of its guests rebook each year and a third of bookings come from word of mouth.
Behind this growth, WeRoad is above all trying to capture a deeper trend: the rise of the “IRL economy”, an economy centered on physical interactions and collective experiences in an environment increasingly dominated by digital platforms and automated interactions.
“In 2017, I founded WeRoad with a simple conviction: with the rise of social networks, and even more so today with AI, people needed to meet in real life,” explains Paolo De Nadai.
The founder presents this operation as a direct validation of this vision by Airbnb. “When I first met Brian Chesky, I immediately felt a deep alignment around what drives everything we do at WeRoad: the need to belong. »
“In a world increasingly shaped by AI and social media, authentic human connections are becoming both rarer and more valuable,” continues Paolo De Nadai. “We built our entire product around this idea, through shared travel experiences that create friendships, communities and sometimes even marriages and families. »
The company now boasts a community of more than 4,000 group leaders from more than 30 nationalities. Since its inception, WeRoad claims to have facilitated the creation of hundreds of thousands of new relationships between its users.
This logic now goes beyond the tourism sector alone. A growing portion of startups funded in the experience economy seek to build hybrid social infrastructures mixing digital and physical interactions. In 2025, WeRoad launched WeMeet, a local meeting platform organizing hikes, sporting events, afterworks or community dinners open beyond just travelers on the platform.
In one year, more than 50,000 people participated in 2,000 WeMeet events in 35 cities, while the dedicated application recorded 150,000 downloads. This product will play a central role in the group’s American expansion.
The US rollout will initially leverage the company’s digital marketing capabilities, local communities and physical events before expanding its travel business more broadly. WeRoad plans in particular to establish a local network of American coordinators and to increase local partnerships in order to reproduce the community model developed in Europe.
The operation also constitutes a strategic signal for Airbnb. Historically focused on accommodation and then local experiences, the American group now seems to be more directly interested in platforms capable of generating recurring communities and physical social interactions.
While a growing part of the tourism industry is accelerating on automation, AI agents and autonomous workflows, WeRoad is instead banking on the economic value of offline human relationships.
At the same time as this fundraising, Andrea D’Amico, CEO of WeRoad and former manager of Booking.com, will join Airbnb in San Francisco to manage the group’s hotel activities. He will, however, retain a role on WeRoad’s board of directors, while Paolo De Nadai will continue to lead the company alongside co-founders Fabio Bin and Erika De Santi.
