Airbnb CEO admits ‘I don’t think anyone has figured out AI for travel or e-commerce yet’ – but says AI now writes 60% of its new code

Airbnb says 60% of its code is now written by AI
CEO says AI helps it work better with AI partners and customer support
But no one has completely understood the technology yet.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky highlighted the effect of AI on code writing at his company, saying that the use of the technology has led to new heights of success.

Airbnb now says that 60% of the code produced by its engineers during the quarter was written by AI tools, showing the technology’s growing dominance at large companies.

And speaking during the company’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call, Chesky seemed to suggest that this is just the beginning, as there are still major hurdles to overcome.

AI coding on the rise

In particular, Chesky explained how Airbnb uses AI to create tools for its API partners, who manage their properties using different software.

“API partners are saying they want to be better hosts and need better tools,” the CEO noted. “AI offers huge leverage: where you might have needed a team of 20 engineers before, one engineer can now mobilize agents to do a lot of work under supervision. Adopting AI tools gives us leverage to build more software for API partners, accelerating work we previously didn’t have resources for.

The company has also increased its use of AI for user help and support, with Chesky saying Airbnb’s customer support bot is now able to handle around 40% of issues without needing to go through a human agent.

However, he noted that AI tools still have a number of issues, particularly in how they present information to someone contacting customer support, which can lead to a much worse user experience.

“I don’t think anyone has figured out AI for travel or e-commerce yet,” Chesky said. “The design of a chatbot, as it’s currently built, doesn’t work for travel or e-commerce. There are four problems: too much text (most e-commerce relies on photos); no direct manipulation (you have to type everything rather than adjusting sliders);

Chesky’s quotes echo a number of other major companies saying that code written by AI is becoming more prevalent – notably, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently claimed that almost a third of the company’s code is now produced this way.

However, these results should still be taken with a grain of salt, as further research has claimed that AI-generated code produces 1.7 times more issues than human code, ultimately leading to longer reviews and the possibility of more bugs making it to the finished product.

Google logo on black background next to text