AI holding company Long Lake closes $6.3B take-private of Amex GBT

Long Lake completed its all-cash acquisition of Global Business Travel Group, the operator of American Express Global Business Travel, on September 29, valuing the company at about $6.3B. The deal was first announced on May 4 and approved by stockholders on August 3. Amex GBT has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and now runs as a private company. Long Lake, founded in 2023, buys services businesses and runs them on its Nexus AI transformation platform. It is backed by General Catalyst, Alpha Wave, Elad Gil, D1 and Thrive. Management says Long Lake engineers will build agentic customer tools and AI support for Amex GBT's travel counselors. This is one of the largest examples yet of the AI rollup model, in which venture-backed operators buy mature service companies and try to expand margins with AI. For founders, it signals that capital is flowing to applying AI inside incumbents, not only to selling software to them.