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Airbnb has acquired a small AI start-up co-founded by Adam Cheyer and plans to use this team to develop select AI tools.
Short-stay rental platform Airbnb has acquired a small AI start-up as the company takes a greater focus on this type of technology.
The acquisition of GamePlanner.AI is the first Airbnb has made since it became a public company. The AI start-up is only a 12-person team, but Airbnb bought it for just under $200m, according to sources speaking with CNBC.
The reported value of the deal may have to do with the names behind the start-up, as GamePlanner.AI was co-founded by Adam Cheyer, one of the founders of Siri.
The start-up is secretive, with no available website to see what it does. Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky claims that the start-up combines “expertise in AI, design and community”.
The rental platform claims to already use AI across its services, including large language models, computer vision models and machine learning. A report by BBC last month suggested that Airbnb has turned to AI as a way to enforce its ban on house parties – a measure that was introduced in 2020 but became permanent last year.
In a meeting with reporters last week, Chesky spoke about how AI will transform the company significantly. He reiterated this view when speaking about the company’s acquisition.
“AI will rapidly alter our world more than any other technology in our lifetime, but we need to ensure that it augments humanity in a positive way,” Chesky said yesterday (14 November).
“Airbnb is one of the more humanistic companies in technology, and I believe that, together with Adam and his team, we can develop some of the best interfaces and practical applications for AI.”
Airbnb said the GamePlanner.AI team will focus on accelerating “select AI projects” and integrating their tools into the Airbnb platform.
“A big part of what attracted us to Airbnb was our shared commitment to using AI to enable human connection,” Cheyer said. “Like Brian, I believe that without great design and community-based intelligence, AI can only achieve a fraction of its potential. But with them, the sky’s the limit.”
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