Israel-based Bizzabo, which helps organizers plan and run both virtual and in-person events, raises $138M Series E led by Insight Partners
Conferences have — for better or worse (and if you've ever been trapped in a cavernous CES exhibition hall, you might say worse) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Bizzabo's $138M Series E lands in the middle of the fastest funding run the events-software category has seen. Since mid-2020 the space has produced a steady drumbeat of rounds: Hopin's $40M Series A in June, Run The World's $10.8M in May, and Welcome's $12M Series A just two weeks before this one. What separates Bizzabo from that cohort is its positioning on both sides of the split — virtual and in-person — at a moment when organizers were planning for conferences to come back in physical form.
The round also signals that Insight Partners sees the hybrid-events thesis as durable rather than pandemic-only, and it sets the funding benchmark the rest of the field then chased: Bevy raised $40M at a $325M valuation in March 2021, and Hubilo went from a $23.5M Series A in February to a $125M Series B by October.
First-order effects
- Bizzabo gains the largest war chest in its category to date, letting it push its combined virtual-plus-in-person platform while competitors were still mostly virtual-only products.
- Insight Partners doubles down on events software as a category, putting its weight behind Bizzabo's hybrid bet rather than the pure-virtual startups it passed over.
Second-order effects
- Rivals respond with escalating rounds of their own — Bevy's $40M at a $325M valuation and Hubilo's jump to a $125M Series B show the category repricing within months of Bizzabo's raise.
- Pure-virtual platforms face pressure to add in-person capabilities, since Bizzabo's hybrid positioning becomes the feature set enterprise buyers benchmark against.
Third-order effects
- If the funding cadence holds, events software consolidates around hybrid platforms with scale capital, squeezing out single-format tools and concentrating the category among a handful of well-funded players.
The trend: Events software is consolidating around hybrid platforms, with round sizes escalating as capital bets that the virtual-plus-in-person format outlasts the pandemic that created it.