NBC News' Tom Llamas talks to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky about how the economy is impacting the company and its new business expansion.
What Brian Chesky said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, said the company's business is resilient despite broader economic concerns, citing last-minute travel and the upcoming World Cup as the largest event in Airbnb history, spanning 17 cities and three countries. He explained Airbnb's expansion into groceries, airport pickup, luggage storage, and car rentals as a response to guest demand. Chesky recounted Airbnb's 2008 origins during the Great Recession, noting that economic uncertainty attracts hosts, with Gen Z as the fastest-growing demographic. He detailed AI integration: 60% of code is AI-authored, 40% of customer service contacts are resolved by AI, and AI summarizes reviews. He warned that pure people managers will decline, replaced by hybrid managers overseeing both people and AI agents. On Chinese AI models, he confirmed past use of open-source models but stressed data is vaulted and secure, and he is cooperating with a congressional committee. He stated 87% of hosts have one or two listings, and Airbnb's presence in cities is often overstated.
Key takeaways
Airbnb expects the World Cup to be its largest event ever, across 17 cities and three countries.
60% of Airbnb's code is now authored by AI, with engineers reviewing it.
40% of customer service contacts are resolved by an AI assistant.
87% of Airbnb's 5.5 million hosts have one or two listings.
Chesky said pure people managers will not survive the AI era, replaced by hybrid managers.
3:59And do you see AI taking any more jobs at your company?
5:43Does your company use Chinese AI models, and are you concerned about data privacy?
6:43Are you finding that the growing sector in Airbnb, is it still sort of private homeowners or is it people that want to use Airbnb as an investment model or even large companies that have said, listen, wow, you can make a profit off this?
7:51Before you go, I'm just curious, what's the craziest Airbnb you have ever come across or heard of on your site?
Six-year low, in part due to rising costs driven by the war with Iran. My next guest is a business leader who was all too familiar with the trend of travel cutbacks. The CEO of leading vacation rental site Airbnb, Brian Chesky, joins Top Story tonight. Brian, thank you for being here. Thank you for talking to us. You deal with Americans every single day who are trying to spend money. What is the state of the economy right now?
Well, I can't speak for the entire economy, but I can speak for the economy of Airbnb, and it's quite resilient and it's actually quite strong. What we are seeing is that there's more last-minute travel, so fewer people are pre-booking, although we do have a feature called Reserve Now Pay Later, so maybe that's offsetting it. But you know, in Milan for the Olympics, initially we thought bookings would be down. It just turned out people pushed the bookings back. We're now expecting for the World Cup to have the largest event in Airbnb history. It's in 17 cities and three countries, and we're actually expecting a lot of travel. So maybe, perhaps counter to the broader narrative that travel's down, we're actually seeing pretty healthy growth in the United States.
But at the same time, I know your business is expanding here, right? You guys are doing stuff like groceries. You're trying to find new clientele in other spaces. If business is so good, why are you trying these other spaces?
Well, you could say that's because business is so good and we can expand. And people, you know, people want more from Airbnb. And we spent 17 years or 16 years being kind of just one thing for people, which is a home. But our guests have told us that they want more. They said they love our homes, they love kitchens, their homes, but they like to have groceries when they arrive. They say, you know, sometimes Uber is not as reliable in some cities and they want someone to pick them up at the airport. They say they get to a city early, they don't want to carry their luggage around. They want luggage storage. They want to rent a car. They want to do it through Airbnb. Some people say, hey, I'm on Airbnb, but I want a boutique hotel, so we can offer that. So we're really responding to what people are asking for.
Yeah, no, it's great. That is true. Sometimes when you get to an Airbnb, it's nice to have the groceries already there. Take us back to the beginning, right? How did you convince people to sort of open up their homes and rent them out?
Well, the history is important. We started in 2008 during the Great Recession. And so that was probably a clue that many people were struggling to pay rent. They were struggling to pay their mortgage. They were losing their homes. And ultimately, I think a lot of people turned to Airbnb to earn extra income. I mean, I started the company with my co-founder because we couldn't afford to pay rent. A design conference coming to San Francisco, all the hotels are sold out. We didn't have any beds. We had three air beds. We pulled them out of the closet. We called it Air Bed and Breakfast. So I think, you know, the other point is rising inflation may also attract hosts. And we're seeing a lot of people becoming hosts. And the fastest growing demographic of hosts are Gen Zers, young people. A lot of young people are buying homes. Maybe it's because there's economic uncertainty. There might be other reasons why. So I think economic uncertainty attracts a lot of people to want to find new ways to make supplemental income. And hosting is a great way to do that.
Oh, it's kind of top to bottom. We're using it and it augments people for the most part, rather than replacing them. 60% of our code is now authored by AI. But engineers work with the code and they're prompting it and they're checking it. Our customer service, you know, 40% of contacts are now resolved by AI assistant. This doesn't replace the people, but it allows our human agents, our real agents, to be able to handle more complex topics and more trust and safety incidents. Many of our features we announced, we now use AI to summarize information. There's a billion reviews on Airbnb. That's a lot of reviews to read. AI can summarize them and point you to the right reviews. So I think of Airbnb AI as something that amplifies Airbnb. But ultimately, you know, Airbnb is a deeply analog idea, you know, traveling, staying in the real world, meeting people, having memorable experiences. This could have existed a long time ago and will exist a long time from now, irrespective of AI.
9 more exchanges in this transcript
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Chesky, B. (2026, May 21). Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on the company's expansion beyond vacation rentals [Interview transcript]. NBC News. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/923451/
MLA
Brian Chesky. "Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on the company's expansion beyond vacation rentals." NBC News, 21 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/923451/.
BibTeX
@misc{chesky2026_923451,
author = {Brian Chesky},
title = {Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on the company's expansion beyond vacation rentals},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, NBC News. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/923451/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
