Airbnb's AI hedge
Brian Chesky on keeping Airbnb its own island. Also: Trump's tech CEO invite, SpaceX IPO takeaways, Meta's bad vibes, and more.
I spent Wednesday at Airbnb HQ for the company’s big spring event. More on that below, plus some of the (many) big stories in tech right now.
Brian Chesky could have walked onstage at Airbnb’s Summer Release event on Wednesday, declared the company a MCP node, and thrown the gates open to AI agents.
What he did instead was add to his own interface, rather than give it over to AI. The new Airbnb now sells car rentals, groceries, airport pickups, luggage storage, boutique hotels, and more. While many pre-AI software companies are racing to integrate with AI chatbots, I came away from Airbnb’s event with the impression that the company is trying to become its own island, where travelers do more and more without ever leaving.
After his keynote, I asked Chesky where Airbnb would open up to agents and where it wouldn’t. He said the first thing to settle is whether MCP is even the right standard for connecting with AI, or whether travel needs its own protocol.
