Airbnb acquires stealth AI startup GamePlanner.AI

One of the co-founders co-founded Siri, which was later acquired by Apple

Airbnb has acquired GamePlanner.AI, a stealth 12-person AI company led by Adam Cheyer and Siamak Hodjat.

While Airbnb is already using AI across its service, including LLMs, computer vision models and machine learning, it most recently launched an AI-powered Photo Tour tool in its 2023 Winter Release.

Cheyer's and Hodjat’s team on the other hand will focus on accelerating select AI projects and integrating its tools into Airbnb's platform.

Cheyer co-founded Siri, which was acquired by Apple, and then led the server side engineering and AI for Siri, while working alongside Steve Jobs. 

He later co-founded Viv Labs, which was acquired by Samsung and is now known as the company’s voice assistant Bixby. 

He was also on the founding team of the petition platform Change.org. Alongside Cheyer, Hadjat led the natural language processing team for Siri at Apple and the largest engineering team for Viv Labs at Samsung.

Brian Chesky, CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, said: “What makes GamePlanner.AI so special is that they combine expertise in AI, design, and community.

“AI will rapidly alter our world more than any other technology in our lifetime, but we need to ensure that it augments humanity in a positive way. 

"Airbnb is one of the more humanistic companies in technology, and I believe that, together with Adam and his team, we can develop some of the best interfaces and practical applications for AI.”

Adam Cheyer, co-founder and CEO of GamePlanner.AI, said: "A big part of what attracted us to Airbnb was our shared commitment to using AI to enable human connection.

“Like Brian, I believe that without great design and community-based intelligence, AI can only achieve a fraction of its potential. But with them, the sky's the limit. The Airbnb team understands this better than anyone.”