Ground transportation specialist Busbud has secured $40 million in credit financing and formed a new parent company, Terra Mobility, to steer the company’s growth. The investment in the Canada-based company has come from Vista Credit, part of Vista Equity Partners. The formation of Terra Mobility combines consumer ground transport booking platforms Busbud, Buson and Recorrido with an operating system for ground travel operators called TerraOS.
The company said TerraOS, which aims to help transport operators run more efficiently, brings together the capabilities from it acquisitions of Betterez and Ratality. The technology provides operators with ticketing, inventory management, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered revenue management and demand forecasting and distribution.
Busbud acquired Buson in March 2024 and Ratality in May of the same year. The company previously acquired Recorrido in early 2022 and later that year merged with Betterez. “Bus and ground travel operators have shown incredible resilience over the past decade, but the industry has changed a lot in the past three years,” said LP Maurice, co-founder and CEO of Terra Mobility. “Travelers are increasingly using AI tools to research their trips and now expect seamless booking experiences, similar to booking industry veteran Erik Blachford has been named chairman of the board after eight years on the company’s board of directors. Blachford has previously served as president and CEO of Expedia and has board positions at Zillow, Fora Travel and Hipcamp. Sam Shank, co-founder and former CEO of HotelTonight, also joins the board of directors. The $40 million credit financing will be used to accelerate the TerraOS roadmap, including AI capabilities, and to expand the company’s marketplace presence across its core regions. It will also enable strategic acquisitions across the ground transport ecosystem.”
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“Terra Mobility sits at the center of a large and structurally underserved ground travel market, with a rare combination of global consumer distribution and mission-critical operator software,” said Greg Galligan, co-head of Vista Credit Partners and senior managing director of Vista Equity Partners. “We are proud to support the team with flexible capital as it builds the technology backbone of this industry.”
Terra Mobility has also announced Mathieu Provencher as CFO. Provencher has experience scaling B2B software companies and previously held similar roles outside the travel industry.
Terra Mobility has 270 employees across 26 countries. The company said roughly 300 operators in more than 15 countries use its enterprise solutions. It added that its Busbud brand, alongside Buson in Brazil and Recorrido in Chile and other parts of Latin America, connect more than 100 million travelers with 4,000 operators.
