How Navan is Simplifying Business Travel & Expense Management With AI
Tech Talks Daily · 2026-05-27 · 38 min
Episode notes
What happens when one of the world's fastest-growing travel platforms decides the future of business travel will be built around AI from the ground up? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sat down with Navan co-founder and CTO Ilan Twig to discuss how the company is reshaping travel, payments, and expense management through AI-native systems designed for the real world, not just polished demos. What immediately stood out during our conversation was Ilan's mix of technical obsession and relentless focus on user experience. This is someone who isolated himself for months to truly understand the mechanics of large language models before most companies had even worked out what ChatGPT meant for their business. That curiosity now powers Navan's AI strategy, where conversational interfaces are replacing what Ilan calls the old "forms and tables" model of software interaction. We explored how Navan's AI assistant, Ava, is already handling thousands of real-world travel support conversations every day, with customer satisfaction scores that rival those of human agents.
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