Stay22 Secures $122 Million from Summit Partners to Reshape Creator Monetization Infrastructure

Montreal-based content monetization platform Stay22 has closed a USD$122 million minority growth investment from Summit Partners, one of the most significant funding rounds in the Canadian creator economy technology space in recent memory. The deal, announced on February 25, 2026, signals growing institutional confidence in the infrastructure layer that connects digital content to commercial transactions — and marks a new chapter for a company that has quietly built a billion-dollar transaction engine from a scrappy pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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From Esports Accommodation Crisis to a Billion-Dollar Platform

The origins of Stay22 are humble and oddly specific. Co-founders Andrew Lockhead and Hamed Al-Khabbaz launched the company in 2016 after struggling to find accommodation for an esports event in Germany. That friction point evolved into a business idea: help people find places to stay near live events. The company eventually pivoted toward travel content creators, a shift that would prove transformational.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Stay22 nearly collapsed, with a venture capital financing deal falling apart as investors bailed. The near-death experience cemented Lockhead’s determination to build without traditional VC backing. The company had raised just USD$1.5 million before the Summit deal — a remarkable constraint for a business that would eventually process over a billion dollars in annual transactions.

By 2021, Stay22 had pivoted decisively to serve travel bloggers and online video influencers, building technology that automated the embedding of affiliate booking links into content. The platform’s AI would read or watch posts, determine contextually relevant placement, and insert links to booking platforms — removing the manual hassle that had long plagued creator monetization workflows.

How the Platform Works

Stay22 operates as an intelligent middleware layer between content creators and the global travel booking ecosystem. Rather than requiring creators to manually curate and place affiliate links, the platform analyzes real-time contextual and behavioral signals to route audiences toward relevant online travel agencies (OTAs). These include major global brands such as Booking.com, Expedia Group, and Tripadvisor.

When a reader or viewer engages with a travel creator’s content, Stay22’s AI identifies where they are likely to travel, what kind of accommodation or experience they might want, and which OTA partner is most likely to convert that intent into a booking. Stay22 earns a fee on completed transactions, sharing a portion of that revenue back to the creator. The model is affiliate marketing evolved with intelligence — automated, contextual, and increasingly accurate as the system processes more signals over time.

According to the Globe and Mail’s reporting on the deal, Stay22 generates between $70 million and $100 million in annual revenue, and the transaction values the company at more than USD$300 million — making it one of Canada’s notable private technology firms operating below the mainstream radar.

Scale and Traction Before the Raise

The numbers behind Stay22’s business provide important context for why Summit Partners was willing to make a substantial bet. The company processed more than USD$1 billion in annual transactions in 2025 alone, a milestone that places it among the more impactful affiliate infrastructure businesses globally.

More than 5,500 creators currently use the platform to identify and activate high-value affiliate opportunities. The partner roster spans a wide range of scale: from independent travel voices such as Nomadic Matt, to large-scale media brands including Time Out and Lonely Planet, to global transportation groups like the Travelier Group. That breadth demonstrates the platform’s flexibility across creator archetypes — from solo bloggers to institutional publishers.

In 2025, Stay22 also made its first meaningful push outside travel. The company expanded into the retail vertical, delivering USD$80 million in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in its first year of retail operations. That early traction provides evidence that the platform’s core AI infrastructure — intent detection, contextual link placement, conversion optimization — is not travel-specific. It is a horizontal capability that can be applied wherever content drives purchasing decisions.

Stay22’s growth track record has earned it consecutive recognition on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 Canada list, ranking 12th in 2024 and 31st in 2025, as well as placement on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 North America list, where it ranked 69th in 2024 and 94th in 2025.

The Investment: Structure and Strategic Rationale

The USD$122 million from Summit Partners is structured as a minority growth investment, meaning Stay22’s founders retain control of the business. According to the Globe and Mail, Summit is primarily buying shares from early investors and employees in what is largely a secondary transaction — a liquidity event for those who supported the company through its earliest and most precarious years.

For Stay22, the rationale for taking on a growth partner was not desperation or runway concerns. Lockhead told the Globe and Mail that he was specifically drawn to Summit’s experience guiding companies through the growth phase, as well as the opportunity to connect with Summit’s broader portfolio of companies in adjacent areas.

As part of the investment, Summit’s Colin Mistele and Daniel Kim have joined the Stay22 Board of Directors. Mistele, a Managing Director who joined Summit in 2011, brings over a decade of experience investing in category-defining software businesses across vertical SaaS, e-commerce enablement, and marketing technology. He commented on the investment: “We believe Stay22 is building essential infrastructure at the intersection of travel, content and commerce. As creators and publishers become more central to demand generation, the need for intelligent, scalable monetization tools has become critical.”

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Summit Partners and the MarTech Playbook

Summit Partners, founded in 1984, has invested in more than 550 companies across technology, healthcare, and other growth industries. More than 175 of those companies have completed public equity offerings, and over 250 have been acquired. The firm maintains offices across North America and Europe and has a clearly articulated thesis around investing in profitable, category-leading growth companies.

Its marketing technology portfolio is particularly relevant to the Stay22 deal. Summit’s notable martech investments include Klaviyo — the email and SMS marketing platform that went public on the NYSE — as well as Manychat, Later, and StackAdapt. The latter, a Canadian programmatic advertising platform, received a $300 million investment from Summit in 2022 and has since raised additional capital, highlighting Summit’s appetite for building out Canadian technology champions in the digital marketing infrastructure space.

Stay22 fits naturally into this portfolio narrative. Like Klaviyo (owned marketing data) and StackAdapt (programmatic media buying), Stay22 represents infrastructure that sits between brands and audiences — but from a creator-first, intent-driven angle that neither of those companies directly addresses.

The Creator Economy: A $200 Billion and Growing Market

The investment arrives at a moment when the creator economy is transitioning from a cultural phenomenon into a recognized economic infrastructure sector. According to Grand View Research, the global creator economy market was estimated at USD$205.25 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD$252.33 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.3% expected through 2033.

Goldman Sachs has projected that the creator economy could reach $480 billion by 2027, roughly doubling from its 2023 size, driven primarily by influencer marketing spend and platform payouts for short-form video monetization. The firm estimated approximately 50 million global creators, with that number growing at a 10-20% annual rate.

What makes this moment particularly notable is how creators have shifted from supplementary marketing channels to primary discovery mechanisms. As Andrew Lockhead noted in the announcement: “Creators and publishers now shape how people discover experiences and products, but many lack the infrastructure to monetize that influence.” This infrastructure gap is precisely what Stay22 has been building to close — and why institutional capital is now flowing into the space.

The broader influencer marketing subset of the creator economy has also seen significant growth. In 2025, the influencer marketing industry was valued at $23.59 billion, representing a 16.55% year-over-year increase. Brands allocating growing budgets to creator partnerships need platforms like Stay22 to ensure that creator content does more than drive awareness — it needs to drive measurable, trackable transactions.

Expansion Plans: From Travel to the Full Creator Stack

With $122 million behind it, Stay22 has outlined an ambitious roadmap that goes far beyond optimizing travel affiliate links. The company plans to expand its monetization infrastructure across retail verticals including food, fashion, DIY, lifestyle, and consumer technology — positioning itself as a foundational platform for the global creator economy rather than a travel-specific tool.

This pivot logic is sound. The underlying technology — contextual AI that identifies purchasing intent within content and routes audiences toward relevant commerce — is inherently domain-agnostic. A food blogger’s recipe post contains purchase signals (ingredients, kitchen equipment, meal kit subscriptions) just as surely as a travel blog contains booking signals. The infrastructure needed to convert that intent into revenue is essentially the same.

Stay22’s CEO has been candid about the commercial appeal of this expansion, noting that retail purchase conversion rates are meaningfully higher than travel. As he explained to the Globe and Mail: “People only purchase travel twice a year, why not sell them something else?” The retail vertical’s $80 million in first-year GMV validates that hypothesis with real data.

The company also plans to accelerate international growth, deepening its relationships across its global supplier and partner network and continuing to invest in AI-powered optimization and product innovation. Since being named a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup in 2019, the company has steadily matured from a promising niche tool into a platform with global commercial scale.

Team Growth and Hiring

Stay22 has more than tripled its headcount over the past two years and is actively recruiting across product development, engineering, and partner support. This expansion reflects a common pattern for companies taking on growth investment: the capital is deployed not just in technology infrastructure, but in the human capital needed to maintain and extend competitive advantage.

The hiring push also signals the company’s seriousness about international expansion. Building partner relationships across diverse global markets — particularly in regions where travel content creation is growing rapidly — requires on-the-ground expertise, language capability, and relationship networks that a Montreal-based headquarters alone cannot supply.

Deal Advisors

The transaction involved several prominent advisory firms. The Raine Group served as exclusive financial advisor to Stay22 — a boutique known for its work in media, technology, and telecommunications. Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP served as legal counsel to Stay22, while Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP and Dentons served as legal counsel to Summit Partners.

What This Signals for Creator Economy Infrastructure

The Stay22-Summit deal is part of a broader pattern of institutional capital recognizing that creator monetization infrastructure is a distinct and valuable technology category. As creators become more central to how consumers discover products, travel, and experiences, the platforms that help creators convert that influence into revenue become indispensable.

The deal also highlights how Canada — and Montreal specifically — continues to produce globally competitive technology companies in unexpected niches. With Stay22 valued at more than $300 million, Jobber, and StackAdapt among Summit’s Canadian bets, the firm has demonstrated consistent conviction in the depth of Canadian startup talent across the technology spectrum.

For content creators navigating an increasingly complex monetization landscape — juggling platform algorithms, brand deal negotiations, and affiliate program requirements — platforms like Stay22 represent a meaningful shift toward automated, intelligent revenue generation. The promise is that creators can focus on making content while the infrastructure handles the commercial plumbing behind the scenes.

If Stay22’s retail expansion delivers GMV growth at a fraction of the rate its travel business has achieved, the company could find itself operating at a scale that makes its current $300 million valuation look conservative within a few years.

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By: Montel Kamau

Serrari Financial Analyst

27th February, 2026