Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: AI is 'the best thing that ever happened' to the company

Speakers

Brian Chesky — CEO and Co-Founder, Airbnb

Sara Eisen — Anchor, CNBC

Airbnb beat Q4 revenue forecasts but missed earnings estimates; the stock was down 13% leading into the print.
CEO Brian Chesky issued annual guidance for the first time, signaling confidence in an "aggressive" Q1 outlook driven by innovation momentum.
Chesky refutes the thesis that AI disrupts Airbnb, arguing it is a massive tailwind because Airbnb is a "real world" business, not just a software layer.
Operational efficiency is improving via AI, with 33% of customer service tickets in North America now handled by AI-powered agents.
Future growth strategy pivots heavily to international expansion (Asia, Latin America) following a successful playbook execution in Brazil.

Ticker	Direction	Speaker	Thesis	Time
ABNB	LONG	Brian Chesky CEO and Co-Founder, Airbnb	Chesky states, "We have, you know, pretty aggressive outlook for Q1... nearly all of the outperformance was from innovations." He adds that "AI is the best thing that ever happened to Airbnb," noting that "traffic we get from chatbots converts higher than the traffic we get from search engines" and AI handles "a third of our tickets in North America." The market has penalized ABNB (down >13% recently) partly due to fears of slowing growth or AI disruption. Chesky counters this by defining AI as a margin-expander (efficiency in customer service) and a revenue-driver (higher conversion rates) rather than a competitive threat. If the "aggressive" Q1 guidance is accurate, the current valuation reflects a pessimism that contradicts management's internal data. The shift to "real world" assets protects the moat against pure generative AI software competitors. Long ABNB as a contrarian "applied AI" play. The company is leveraging AI to fix unit economics while expanding into under-penetrated markets like Asia and Latin America. Continued earnings misses (like Q4); failure of the "Brazil playbook" to replicate in Asian markets; global consumer travel slowdown.	0:19