ABNB
Airbnb’s new obsession: AI
Brian Chesky basically admitted Airbnb got the AI story wrong at first — and then promptly turned around and said the company is now spending a lot more on it because the payoff is real. That’s a fun little corporate plot twist: the thing that used to be “interesting” is now getting budgeted like it’s oxygen.
Why investors cared
Chesky said AI is helping Airbnb with a bunch of unglamorous-but-profitable chores: listing creation, pricing, and customer service. He said 45% of AI-handled guest interactions are getting resolved without a human, which is the kind of stat that makes finance folks grin because it smells like margin expansion.
On top of that, Airbnb posted a strong quarter: revenue hit $3.61 billion, up 17% year over year and slightly above estimates, while earnings came in at $1.37 per share, also ahead of Wall Street. Chesky said the ROI on AI is good enough that the company’s revenue is now higher than it expected, which is Wall Street-speak for: the experiment is working and the checkbook is open.
The Meta cameo
Chesky also gave a shoutout to Ahmad Al-Dahle, the former Meta generative AI leader now serving as Airbnb’s CTO, saying he helped move the company from “middle of the pack” to the front of the pack on AI. Meta itself isn’t the story here, though — it’s more like the college on the resume than the headline act.
Big picture: Airbnb is trying to turn AI from a buzzword into a profit lever. If it keeps turning more guest chats into bot chats without tanking the experience, that’s the kind of quiet operating improvement investors love to reward.