- Airbnb says 60% of its code is now written by AI
- CEO says AI is helping him work better with AI partners and customer support
- But he claims no one has fully figured out the technology yet.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has highlighted the effect of AI in writing code on his business, stating that the use of the technology has taken him to new heights of success.
Airbnb now claims that 60% of the code its engineers produced during the quarter was written with AI tools, showing the growing dominance of the technology at larger companies.
And speaking on the company’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call, Chesky seemed to suggest this was just the beginning, as there were still some major hurdles to overcome.
AI coding is on the rise
In particular, Chesky described how Airbnb uses AI to create tools for its API partners, who manage their properties using different software.
“API partners say they want to be better hosts and need better tools,” the CEO said. “AI offers great leverage: where once a team of 20 engineers might have been needed, now one engineer can activate agents to perform a large amount of work under supervision. Adopting AI tools gives us the advantage to create more software for API partners, accelerating work we previously didn’t have the resources to do.”
The company has also been increasing its use of AI for help and user assistance, and Chesky says Airbnb’s customer service AI bot is now able to handle about 40% of issues without needing to call in a human agent.
However, he noted that AI tools still have a number of issues, particularly in terms of how they present information to someone contacting customer service, which can lead to a much worse user experience.
“I don’t think anyone has discovered AI for travel or e-commerce yet,” Chesky said. “A chatbot design, as currently built, doesn’t work for travel or e-commerce. There are four problems: too much text (most e-commerce is photo-based); no direct manipulation (you have to type everything instead of adjusting sliders); poor comparison (you can get lost trying to compare thousands of options in a thread); and most bookings are multiplayer, while chatbots are primarily single-player and not native to maps.”
Chesky’s quotes echo other major companies that claim AI-written code is becoming widespread; Notably, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently claimed that nearly a third of the company’s code is now produced this way.
However, these findings should always be taken with a pinch of salt, as further research has stated that AI-generated code produces 1.7 times more problems than human code, ultimately leading to longer reviews and the possibility of more bugs making their way into the finished product.
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