The Information's TITV Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on AI Strategy & New CTO, Microsoft’s Anthropic Deal | Jan 14, 2026
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Jan 14, 2026 
Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, shares insights on integrating AI to transform the travel experience, detailing features that aid hosts with listing automation and customer service. Tuhin Srivastava, CEO of Base10, discusses how their infrastructure supports AI inference across various models and clouds. Finance editor Ken Brown reveals the launch of Erbador Bank, a tech-focused bank addressing modern financing needs amid rising regulatory challenges. They also explore the implications of a proposed wealth tax in California on billionaire residents.
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Specialize Frontier Models For Travel
- Brian Chesky says Airbnb will license frontier models and specialize by tuning them for travel and living use cases.
- He plans to combine frontier AI with Airbnb design to create travel-specific interfaces and services.
Start AI With Hard, High-Impact Tasks
- Airbnb started AI with the hardest use case: customer service, cutting English contacts by ~15%.
- Chesky expects travel-specialized agents rather than one generic agent to provide better user outcomes.
Quantify AI ROI With Three Metrics
- Measure AI ROI across three vectors: developer tooling velocity, customer-service cost reduction, and conversion-driven revenue lift.
- Prioritize shipping features faster, cutting support contacts, and improving booking conversion.