TL;DRAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky plans to back a new AI lab focused on user interaction and design, while remaining at Airbnb. The move puts him in competition with Sam Altman, whom he helped reinstate at OpenAI in 2023.
Brian Chesky has spent years as an AI kingmaker. He met Sam Altman through Y Combinator in 2006, advised him on managing OpenAI’s hypergrowth, and helped broker Altman’s return to power after the board fired him in November 2023. He was reportedly considered for a seat on OpenAI’s board.
Now he is entering competition with his protégé’s company. Chesky plans to back a new AI lab of his own, Bloomberg first reported on Wednesday, with a focus on user interaction and design. He will remain as Airbnb’s CEO and will not lead the lab himself. The details are early-stage and could change.
Why Chesky is unsatisfied
The move reflects a frustration Chesky has voiced publicly for more than a year. He said last year that Airbnb had not struck an LLM partnership because existing products were not quite ready for what he wanted to build. His argument is that travel and commerce require a rich visual interface, not the text-based chatbots that OpenAI and Anthropic have popularised.
