Airbnb has acquired GamePlanner.AI, a stealth 12-person AI company led by Adam Cheyer and Siamak Hodjat.
“What makes GamePlanner.AI so special is that they combine expertise in AI, design, and community,” said Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky. “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.”
While Airbnb is already using AI across our service, including large language models, computer vision models and machine learning – and most recently, an AI-powered Photo Tour tool launched in our 2023 Winter Release – Adam and Siamak’s team will focus on accelerating select AI projects and integrating their tools into our platform.
Adam co-founded Siri, which was acquired by Apple, and then led 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. Adam was also on the founding team of Change.org, the world’s largest petition platform. Alongside Adam, Siamak led the natural language processing team for Siri at Apple and led the largest engineering team for Viv Labs at Samsung.
“A big part of what attracted us to Airbnb was our shared commitment to using AI to enable human connection,” said Adam Cheyer, co-founder and CEO of GamePlanner.AI. “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.”
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