HKB Investment Group Announces Strategic Investment in AI-Travel Platform StayNow

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HKB Investment Group (“HKB”), a comprehensive owner, developer, and operator of high-performance real estate, today announced a strategic investment in StayNow, an AI-powered travel platform designed to unify the end-to-end guest journey. The investment, made through HKB’s venture arm, marks a significant step in HKB’s mission to integrate transformative technology across its $1B+ diversified portfolio.

Bridging the Gap Between Digital Planning and Physical Stay

The partnership centers on the deployment of StayNow’s proprietary NowAI—an agentic AI assistant—across HKB’s extensive hospitality network of 3,500+ hotel keys. Unlike traditional travel applications that focus solely on the planning phase, StayNow offers a continuous "operating system" that travels with the guest from their initial search to their in-room experience.

By providing StayNow with a real-world "hospitality sandbox," HKB is accelerating the development of a frictionless B2B2C model. This allows for real-time beta testing of in-room service integrations, autonomous guest requests, and hyper-personalized local discovery, all within a single interface.

A Vision for Integrated Hospitality

"At HKB, we believe that the future of real estate lies in the seamless integration of physical assets and digital innovation," said Hari Bhagat, Founder, Chairman & CEO of HKB Investment Group. "Investing in StayNow allows us to optimize our hospitality ecosystem, offering our guests a level of personalization and efficiency that was previously unattainable. This is a strategic move to ensure our portfolio remains at the forefront of the evolving travel landscape."

Revolutionizing the Guest Journey

StayNow’s platform addresses the "During-Trip" fragmentation that currently plagues the industry. By moving AI from a simple chat interface to a transactional engine, StayNow enables guests to book stays, coordinate group travel via the WanderWallet bill-splitting feature, and interact with hotel services in one unified hub.

"StayNow is building a new standard for how guests interact with the world around them," said RJ, CEO of StayNow. "Partnering with HKB gives us the institutional scale to prove that our technology can act as a continuous operating system for the entire journey—simplifying the experience from the first digital prompt to the physical arrival and beyond."

About HKB Investment Group

HKB Investment Group is a comprehensive owner, developer, and operator of high-performance real estate. Since 2016, HKB has scaled a diversified $1B+ portfolio across the hospitality, residential, and commercial sectors. By uniting institutional discipline with an entrepreneurial mindset, HKB delivers lasting value for its partners and the communities it serves.

About StayNow

StayNow is an AI-driven travel platform that simplifies the entire travel lifecycle. Through its "NowAI" assistant, the app provides a seamless flow from custom itinerary building and booking to on-site guest services, creating a unified operating system for the modern traveler.