Airbnb is intensively using artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up internal product development and is starting to test AI-driven search for consumers. Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, outlined the impacts during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.
AI's impact on development speed and feature output
According to Chesky, AI has reduced the time from concept to launch by up to 60% for some key initiatives. He also said that, compared with the same six-month period last year, the company has increased the number of features and improvements shipped this year by nearly 80%.
Previously, Airbnb stated that AI writes about 60% of its code. Chesky emphasized that AI has supported areas such as search, sign-up, checkout and payments. The company has also rolled out features to help hosts, including faster onboarding flows.
Testing AI search with an opt-in toggle
While consumer-facing AI rollouts at Airbnb have been cautious and mostly limited to features like review summaries and listing highlights, Chesky has argued that a simple chatbot interface is not sufficient for travel use cases. Instead, Airbnb has focused on building AI for search, discovery and support.
Chesky announced that the company will begin testing AI-powered search. The new search will not be forced on users: Airbnb will provide a toggle so people can opt into AI search. Users who switch will be able to type natural-language queries and receive visually formatted results. Chesky said titles in those results could be AI-generated and conversational, and product pages would include highlights generated in real time and personalized to the user.
AI in customer support
On the back end, Airbnb has heavily deployed AI in customer support. The company launched its AI-powered support bot in North America in 2025, and this year expanded it to more than 50 languages, with plans to enable voice calls later in the year.
Airbnb reports that nearly 45% of customer issues that begin with its AI agent are completed without human intervention. As a result, support cost per booking is down 16% year-over-year.
Financial results
For the quarter ended in June, Airbnb reported revenue of $3.6 billion, up 17% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA rose 21% to $1.3 billion.
Why this matters
The company’s disclosures indicate that AI is producing measurable operational gains at Airbnb — shortening development cycles, increasing the pace of feature delivery and cutting support costs. The planned optional AI search lets Airbnb evaluate a new search experience in real-world use without displacing existing search and filter behavior.
