Soar

Soar's founder, Stanley Virgint, has been building his text-based travel agent since December 2024. On May 17, 2026, Henry Langmack messaged Virgint on LinkedIn to ask when Soar would launch. On May 19, Langmack and his partner Alex Slater launched a separate flight-booking startup under the same name, Soar. Virgint called it a copycat, applied for a trademark, and sent a cease-and-desist letter, according to Business Insider. Trademark lawyers told Business Insider that the two companies sharing a name in the same market could confuse customers. In the hours before that story ran, Langmack and Slater decided to rename their company, though they have not announced the new name yet.

Soar came out of beta and launched in 2026 after about a year of testing, according to PhocusWire's Startup Stage series. It's an AI travel agent you text: it connects to your Gmail to automatically track every flight, hotel, and Airbnb booking and build a traveler profile from your inbox, then helps book new trips, checks you in for flights, handles changes, and gives in-trip support over iMessage. The company is backed by former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford.