Overview
- Airbnb reported a strong quarter and credited AI for the gains, saying revenue rose 17% to $3.6 billion and adjusted EBITDA climbed 21%, with shares jumping about 15% after the results Friday.
- CEO Brian Chesky told reporters the company will spend “a lot more” on AI tokens because inference costs are small versus booking revenue and measurable productivity gains.
- Airbnb has moved core engineering and product work to AI, saying models now write roughly 60% of its code, cut concept‑to‑launch time by as much as 60% and helped ship about 80% more features year‑over‑year.
- The company’s AI customer agent resolves nearly 45% of issues without human help, a shift that the firm says has reduced support cost per booking by about 16% and led to wider language coverage and planned voice support.
- Airbnb is cautiously testing consumer features, including an opt‑in natural‑language, visual AI search that generates personalized titles and highlights, while limiting expensive models to tasks that need them to preserve its role in booking and discovery.