PredictX has won the Business Travel Innovator Award for Orchestra, its AI agent team for travel and expense, at the Business Travel Show America 2026 Innovation Faceoff. The judges' award was presented on Thursday 15 October at the Javits Center in New York, after CEO Keesup Choe pitched Orchestra live against eleven other finalists.
Business Travel News published the result on 16 October 2026. BTN's report on the Faceoff winners says PredictX "earned top honors from judges" for "its new multi-agent AI platform Orchestra", and that the show's attendees voted Swivul the winner of the People's Choice Award.
We are proud of this one, and the reason is who was listening. Two of the four judges buy corporate travel for a living, the audience was full of people who do the same, and every pitch ran against the clock. That is a hard room to win.
What is the Business Travel Show America Innovation Faceoff?
The Business Travel Show America Innovation Faceoff is the New York edition of the Business Travel Innovation Faceoff, a live pitching competition for new business travel technology run by the BTN Group, part of Northstar Travel Group. In the organiser's words, the 2026 edition was "a tense, two-day, 12-way battle including live, timed pitching to a panel of expert judges and more than 500 corporate travel buyers".
The Faceoff produces two awards: the judges choose the Business Travel Innovator Award, and attendees vote for the People's Choice Award. Business Travel Show America posts the result on its Innovation Faceoff 2026 page, where anyone registered can watch the sessions on demand.
Who judged the 2026 Innovation Faceoff?
Four judges sat on the 2026 Innovation Faceoff panel, which the organiser built to combine "the buyer's eye, the innovator's experience and the journalist's scrutiny":
- Elizabeth West, BTN Group VP of content, head judge
- Anna Sun, co-founder and CEO of Nowadays and last year's Faceoff winner
- Kristen Reeves, CCTE, head of global travel at Wellington Management
- Seth Adam Wood, GTP, global travel manager at Lineage
What did Keesup Choe show on stage?
Keesup Choe showed Orchestra as a team of AI agents that a travel manager directs the way they would direct colleagues, so the repetitive work leaves their desk. He put it in one line on stage, as BTN reported: "Orchestra will do the heavy lifting, so you can do the thinking and the strategy".
Orchestra's nine specialist agents cover work such as research, audit, supply chain and traveller risk, and return finished, cited work. He was clear that this is in use now: "Clients are using Orchestra today to automate their sourcing, take care of their travelers, prevent leakage, identify fraud and make savings".
BTN's report describes a chief-of-staff agent, which Keesup Choe named Leo in his presentation, after Leo McGarry, the president's chief of staff in The West Wing. Leo coordinates the other agents: people can give it work through Teams or Slack, as they would any colleague, and it can route that work between agents and report back.
He gave two examples. In the first, someone asks Leo to watch VIP travellers for disruption; when one occurs, it contacts the travel management company to change the plans and keeps the travellers informed. In the second, someone asks Leo to find savings; it works with the other agents to build a strategy and, once that person accepts it, has the agents carry it out and report back to that person on what was saved.
The strategy comes back to a person before anything is executed, and that is how Orchestra's AI agent team runs every project: the plan waits for approval, and nothing runs until a person gives it.
Can an AI agent work inside the travel tools you already have?
Yes: Orchestra by PredictX can work inside the booking, office and sourcing tools a travel programme already runs, and that is the capability the Faceoff judges singled out. BTN reports that Orchestra can also work with other agentic applications, and that the judges saw its work within legacy technology as "a key necessity for travel programs".
Keesup Choe made the case in plain terms:
A legacy system that works perfectly well, there's no reason to replace it. It's just that you don't want to use it. But if an agent doesn't complain and can use it 24/7, what do you care?
BTN set one line of the pitch apart: "If a human can use it, Orchestra can use it".
PredictX agrees with the judges. Most travel programmes already own booking, office and sourcing tools that do their job, and what they lack is the hours somebody has to spend inside them. An agent that works in those tools gives a travel team those hours back without asking it to replace anything first.
A 14-second clip with no narration. The crystal trophy, a glass globe on a tall glass block engraved Business Travel Show America 2026, Innovation Faceoff, Business Travel Innovator Award and BTN Group by Northstar, stands on a window ledge while the camera's focus moves between the trophy and the city outside.
Is this PredictX's first Innovation Faceoff win?
No: the Business Travel Innovator Award at Business Travel Show America 2026 is PredictX's second Innovation Faceoff win. The Business Travel Innovation Faceoff runs at Business Travel Show Europe as well, and that is where Cogent by PredictX won the 2025 Faceoff in London. BTN's report notes that CEO Keesup Choe "is no stranger to the winner's circle for BTN's Innovation Faceoff events".
The two wins sit on one line. PredictX launched Orchestra in June 2026, built on Cogent, the agent workspace it had launched a year earlier. The product that won in London in 2025 is the foundation of the product that took the judges' award in New York in 2026.
A fortnight before New York, Cogent also took gold in Business Travel Achievement in Artificial Intelligence Innovation at the Business Travel Awards Europe 2026 in London.
Who represented PredictX at Business Travel Show America?
Keesup Choe represented PredictX on the Faceoff stage, and the company ran Booth 417 for both days of the show, 14 and 15 October. He pitched in the Delta Business Theater on the Thursday morning, and by 3pm the same day he was on the stage of the Capital One Business Travel Knowledge Arena, holding the trophy.
PredictX people in New York included:
- Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX, who pitched Orchestra and collected the award
- Simon Woods, on Booth 417 for both days
- Simon Carmouche, on Booth 417 for both days
- Angela McFarlane, on Booth 417 for both days
- Ryan Prewitt, on Booth 417 for both days
Simon Woods commented on PredictX's LinkedIn post about the win:
This one felt especially huge: so many people in the room, eminent judges and such focussed, well-prepared competition. Thanks to [Business Travel Show America] and Louis Magliaro for such an incredible event. Already looking forward to next year!
So are we. The show returns to the Javits Center on 15 and 16 September 2027.
Our thanks
Our thanks go to the Business Travel News team, among them Elizabeth West, David Meyer, Jen Bankard and Louis Magliaro, and to the Northstar Travel Group team behind the show. Thank you to the judges, Elizabeth West, Anna Sun, Kristen Reeves and Seth Adam Wood, for the time and scrutiny they gave twelve pitches. And thank you to everyone who came to Booth 417 or sat in on the Thursday morning session.
Congratulations to Swivul and its co-founder and CEO, Sarah Figueroa, on the People's Choice Award, the one the attendees vote for themselves.
Co-founder Ayesha Shah put it plainly on LinkedIn: "Can't thank Business Travel Show enough for recognising PredictX..."
The recognition came to one pitch on one stage in New York, but the work behind it was done by every PredictX team.
PredictX people in this story, on LinkedIn:
What is PredictX?
PredictX is the agentic AI data intelligence platform for travel and expense, headquartered in London. Every agent on the platform runs inside PredictX's agentic AI framework, with governed data access, human-in-the-loop checkpoints and self-validation on every output.
The agents are the newer layer. Beneath them sits a decade of work bringing travel and expense records together and checking them, so the figures an agent starts from have already been validated. Every answer it returns is cited and traced to its source.
Day to day, teams work with those agents in Cogent, our travel and expense workspace: they ask a question in plain language, and specialist agents plan the work, run it across live booking, card and expense records, and return a validated answer.
Orchestra, the AI agent team for travel and expense, runs whole projects your team directs, from a project library that keeps growing. A project manager agent works through the scope with you and drafts the plan, which waits for your approval before anything runs; specialist agents then work in parallel, and anything surprising comes back to you for review. The deliverable returns cited and editable, whether that is an airline negotiation pack or a scored hotel RFP, and it re-runs on your schedule.
Four of the six largest global travel and expense programmes run on PredictX.
The judges saw Orchestra against the clock on a stage in New York. A walkthrough gives it more time and your own data: bring one project your team has never had the hours for, and the first run happens in the session, with the plan waiting for your approval.
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