NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 11, 2026--
Bilt, the membership for where you live, today announced it has acquired Sion, a commission management platform trusted by more than 8,000 travel advisors, for $30 million. The acquisition strengthens Bilt's ability to deliver on one of its members' most popular rewards categories — travel — by building the infrastructure that supports the world's best travel advisors in serving Bilt's growing member base.
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Bilt was founded on a simple idea: where you live should be the center of your life, and your membership should reflect that. Bilt Members have access to a platform built around housing: earning and redeeming rewards, accessing neighborhood services and benefits, building a path to homeownership, and more. Within that membership, rewards have become one of the most powerful and beloved features, and travel is consistently among the most popular ways members choose to use them. The quality of that travel experience depends directly on the quality of the advisors and businesses behind it.
Sion has built best-in-class infrastructure for one of the travel industry's most persistent pain points: commission reconciliation. Today, Sion manages $7B+ in travel booking revenue, supports more than 8,000 travel advisors, and drives an 85% invoice follow-up success rate — all helping travel businesses get paid faster and operate more efficiently. By acquiring Sion, Bilt gains the technology and the team to further extend its hospitality platform to travel advisors, and in doing so, builds a network of world-class travel advisors who can deliver exceptional experiences to Bilt Members using their rewards to see the world.
"Where you live is where your life is centered, and our job at Bilt is to make that membership as powerful as possible, from your neighborhood to wherever you want to travel," said Ankur Jain, Founder and CEO of Bilt. "Bilt's hospitality platform already helps properties and merchants deliver their best customer experience, and with Sion, we're extending that to travel advisors. By giving travel advisors the tools to run their entire business more effectively, we're building a network of the world's best travel advisors, and our members benefit from that. This is what building a membership truly centered around where you live looks like."
This marks Bilt's second acquisition in just 11 months and reflects the company's broader strategy of building the hospitality platform that powers the full resident experience: from housing payments to neighborhood services, and now, travel.
"Travel businesses don't need another intermediary trying to compete with them," said Irving Betesh, Co-Founder of Sion. "They need modern infrastructure and software that solves real operational problems. Sion has built a best-in-class experience around one of the biggest pain points in travel, commissions. We're excited to join the Bilt team, allowing us to further accelerate what we can deliver for travel businesses and advisors serving travelers around the world."
"This is a meaningful milestone for Sion and an even more meaningful step forward for our customers," said Alfons Musry, Co-Founder of Sion. "By joining Bilt, our combined resources and long-term backing can accelerate and actually deliver the product improvements our customers have been asking for. Our customers rely on Sion daily, and that won't change. What changes is what we're now able to build."
Bilt's hospitality platform is built around a consistent principle: every category of partner — residential properties, neighborhood merchants, and travel advisors — should have the tools to deliver their best possible customer experience, end to end. Travel advisors will be able to leverage Bilt's platform to manage their workflows, serve clients more seamlessly, and grow their businesses — with Bilt Members representing a high-value, rewards-rich audience within that broader customer base. Together, Bilt and Sion will accelerate development across essential advisor workflows, including commission reconciliation and tracking, invoice follow-up automation, and new tools for managing bookings and payments more efficiently.
Following the acquisition, Sion will continue to operate independently under Betesh and Musry's leadership, maintaining existing client relationships and services while expanding its capabilities through Bilt's platform and network.
About Bilt
Launched in 2021, Bilt is the membership for where you live and the hospitality platform powering the residential ecosystem around it. For members, Bilt makes where our members live the center of their lives – allowing them to earn rewards on housing payments, access neighborhood services, build a path to homeownership, and redeem points across a best-in-class travel and lifestyle ecosystem including airlines, hotels, boutique fitness studios, neighborhood restaurants, and more. For partners, from residential properties and neighborhood merchants to travel advisors, Bilt's hospitality platform provides the tools to deliver exceptional customer experiences and build deeper relationships with residents. The Bilt Alliance spans more than 6 million homes across the country, developed in partnership with some of the nation's largest residential owners and operators. Bilt boasts the highest value rewards currency on the market today. For more information, visit www.bilt.com.
Bilt Acquires Sion for $30M to Bring World-Class Travel Advisors Into Its Housing Membership Ecosystem
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing jittery global markets and drooping poll numbers since launching a war on Iran, President Donald Trump has cycled from calls for “unconditional surrender” to sounding amenable to an end state in which Iran trades one hard-line ayatollah for another.
Shifting comments from the Republican president and his top aides are adding to the precariousness of the 12-day-old conflict, which is impacting nearly every corner of the Middle East and causing economic tremors around the globe. With neither side budging, the war is now on an unpredictable path — one in which a credible endgame is still unclear.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday told reporters it's up to Trump “whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end” of the war. Trump, during the course of one speech at a House Republican gathering on Monday, went from calling the war a “short-term excursion” that could end soon to proclaiming “we haven’t won enough."
The vacillation has fueled criticism from those who say Trump lacks a clear goal. “They didn’t have a plan," Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told reporters. "They have no timeline. And because of that, they have no exit strategy.”
Since ordering the Iran bombardment, Trump has continually shifted his timelines and goals for his war against Iran, a crosscurrent of rhetoric that has delivered more questions than answers.
Over the last few days, Trump has called for the “unconditional surrender" of Iran's leaders, while suggesting he's already succeeded in achieving his objective of decimating Iran’s military.
At the same time, Trump's team has sought to soothe anxious Americans that this won't be a long, drawn-out conflict, even as the president has insisted he hasn't ruled out the option of putting U.S. troops on the ground.
The U.S. military says that it has effectively destroyed the Iranian navy and made huge strides in defanging Iran’s ability to launch missiles and drones at its neighbors throughout the region. And yet, the critical Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil passes on a typical day, remains effectively closed to business, and Iranian leaders remain unbowed.
The Revolutionary Guard vowed Iran would not allow “a single liter of oil” through the vital waterway until the United States stops its bombing campaign. And Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official, offered a menacing message on Tuesday after Trump had threatened to attack Iran “TWENTY TIMES HARDER” if Tehran stopped oil flowing through the strait.
“The sacrificial nation of Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats,” Larijani wrote on X. “Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”
Trump has struggled to make his case to Americans about why preemptive action against Iran was necessary and how it squares with his pledge to keep America out of the “forever wars” of the last two decades that he's bemoaned for costing too much money and too many American lives. Thus far, eight U.S. troops have been killed and about 140 injured in the retaliatory salvos from Iran throughout the region.
One of several reasons Trump has offered to justify launching the war is that he had a “feeling” that Iran was getting set to attack the United States.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slightly amended that position, telling reporters that the president “had a feeling” that was “based on fact.”
However, Pentagon officials in private briefings have told congressional staffers that the U.S. does not have intelligence indicating that Iran was planning to preemptively attack the U.S.
Recent polling shows Trump's decision to attack Iran hasn't come with the rallying-around-the-flag effect that has typically accompanied the start of recent U.S. wars.
About half of voters in Quinnipiac and Fox News polls said the U.S. military action in Iran makes the U.S. “less safe,” while only about 3 in 10 in each poll said it made the country safer. A CNN poll found about half of U.S. adults thought the military action would make Iran “more of a threat” to the U.S., while only about 3 in 10 thought it would lessen the danger.
In that CNN poll, about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they trusted Trump “not much” or “not at all” to make the right decisions about the U.S. use of force in Iran.
European allies are treading carefully after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez faced the wrath of Trump, who deemed them not sufficiently supportive in backing his war of choice.
But even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has been broadly supportive of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, said on Tuesday that “more questions arise with every day of war.”
“Above all, we’re concerned that there is apparently no joint plan for how this war can be brought quickly to a convincing end,” Merz said.
Merz stressed that “Germany and Europe have no interest in an endless war” or in Iran’s territorial integrity disintegrating.
The president has chosen to deflect responsibility for the bombing of a girls' school in southern Iran on the first day of the conflict, a strike that killed at least 165 people.
Trump on Saturday blamed the attack on Iran, saying its security forces are "very inaccurate" with munitions.
On Monday, after the investigative group Bellingcat posted verified video that showed a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hitting a Revolutionary Guard facility near the school, causing the explosion, Trump again insisted it could have been Iran's fault but said that he would accept whatever an ongoing U.S. investigation into the matter might find.
The president erroneously claimed that Tehran had access to Tomahawks, a U.S.-manufactured weapon system that is only available to the U.S. and a few close allies.
Asked by a reporter, Leavitt didn’t directly answer why Trump falsely asserted that Iran has access to the U.S.-made missile.
Instead, she responded in part that “the president has a right to share his opinions with the American public” while noting “he has said he’ll accept the conclusion of that investigation.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that Trump's claim “is beyond asinine.”
“Again, he says whatever pops into his head no matter what the truth is," Schumer said. “And we all know he lies, but on something as formidable as this, it’s appalling.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, was among Trump allies gently making the case that it was important for the Trump administration to clarify what happened to the school.
Cramer said the military must “do everything you can to eliminate those mistakes going forward.”
“But you also can’t undo it," he added.
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Ben Finley and Linley Sanders in Washington and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed reporting.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., leaves after a closed door briefing on the Iran war before the Senate Armed Services Committee at the Capitol Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while traveling aboard Air Force One en route from Dover Air Force Base, Del., to Miami, Saturday, March 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Members Issues Conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
