Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code

Much of Airbnb’s Q1 2026 earnings call was devoted to talking about how the company is using AI tools for programming, customer support, and research. Notably, the company claimed that 60% of the code produced by its engineers this quarter was written by AI, which echoes comments from others like Google, Microsoft, and Spotify, who all talked about AI accelerating their programming.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky noted that the company finds AI particularly useful in building tools for API partners who manage their properties using different software.

“API partners are saying they want to be better stewards and they need better tools,” Chesky said. “AI provides tremendous leverage — where you might have needed a team of 20 engineers before, an engineer can now run agents to do a lot of supervised work. Adopting AI tools gives us the ability to build more software for API partners, accelerating work that we previously didn’t have the resources for.”

Airbnb has slowly expanded its use of artificial intelligence for customer support over the past year, and Chesky said Thursday that its customer support AI bot now handles 40% of issues without escalating to a human agent, up from about 33% earlier this year. The travel company has also been experimenting with using artificial intelligence to power its search function.

However, Chesky acknowledged the difficulty of truly using AI tools in travel or e-commerce, pointing to weaknesses in the chatbot’s user interface.

“I don’t think anyone has discovered AI in travel or e-commerce yet […] Chatbot design, as currently created, does not lend itself to travel or e-commerce. There are four problems: too much text (most e-commerce relies on redirecting images); There’s no direct manipulation (you have to type everything in instead of adjusting sliders); Bad comparison (you might get lost trying to compare thousands of options in a thread); Most reservations are multiplayer, while chatbots are primarily single-player, and not native to the map.

Airbnb said net income rose 3.9% to $160 million in the first quarter, while revenue increased 18% to $2.7 billion, compared to the previous year. The number of nights booked increased by 9% to 156.2 million during this period. The new “Book Now, Pay Later” feature attracted nearly 20% of the total booking value in the quarter, the company said.