Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said AI has cut feature development time by as much as 60% and increased features shipped by nearly 80%, as the company prepares to begin testing a natural-language AI search toggle for users.
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said during the company's second-quarter earnings call that artificial intelligence has cut the time from concept to launch by as much as 60%, as the company prepares to begin testing an AI-driven search experience for users.
Chesky attributed the acceleration directly to AI-assisted development, noting that Airbnb has also increased the total number of features and improvements shipped in the first half of this year by nearly 80% compared to the same period last year.
"Today, we're building, testing, and iterating faster than we could just a year ago. Across some of our key initiatives, we've reduced the time from concept to launch by as much as 60%. And compared to the same six months last year, we've increased the number of features and improvements we shipped this year by nearly 80%," Chesky said on the call.
The remarks build on an earlier disclosure, made earlier this year, that AI is now writing 60% of Airbnb's code. Chesky cited search, sign-up, checkout, and payments as areas where AI has contributed meaningfully to product development, alongside tools that streamline onboarding for new hosts.
Consumer-facing AI features at Airbnb have rolled out more gradually, limited mostly to review summaries and listing highlights. Chesky has previously argued that a standard chatbot interface does not fit travel use cases, and the company has instead focused its consumer AI work on search, discovery, and support.
That approach is now moving toward a public test. The company plans to offer users a toggle that switches from the existing search-and-filter interface to an AI-powered search mode, where natural-language queries return results in a visual format with AI-generated titles and personalized listing highlights.
"The titles [in the answer] could actually be AI-generated and they can be conversational as if you're reading a chatbot, but more visual. Then you get to the product description page and the highlights are AI generated in real-time and personalized to you," Chesky said.
On the customer support side, Airbnb's AI agent — first launched in North America in 2025 — has since expanded to more than 50 languages. The company said nearly 45% of customer issues that begin with the AI agent are resolved without any human involvement, and support cost per booking has fallen 16% year-over-year.
The company is also planning to extend voice call support to the AI agent later this year.
Airbnb posted revenue of $3.6 billion for the quarter ended in June, a 17% increase year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA rising 21% to $1.3 billion.
The results and the pace of AI adoption signal that Airbnb is moving to close the gap between its internal engineering productivity gains and what users actually experience on the platform — with AI search the most visible test of whether that transition resonates with consumers.
Marc Sabatini is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering enterprise software, cybersecurity, and the regulatory beats that shape both. He focuses on the deal flow and policy decisions that move markets.
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