As Meta’s head of generative AI Ahmad Al-Dahle joins Airbnb as CTO; Sam Altman says: I am excited to see what Airbnb CEO Brian and Ahmad ...

Airbnb has hired a former Meta Platforms executive as its new chief technology officer (CTO), as the short-term rental company is investing to include more artificial intelligence (AI) and personalization elements into its service this year.

Ahmad Al-Dahle, who most recently led generative AI at Facebook and Instagram parent Meta and the team behind its Llama open-source models, joined Airbnb this week. Ahmad succeeds Ari Balogh, who stepped aside from his role in December after seven years at the company. As per the company, Ahmad will oversee its engineering and data science teams. Incidentally, among the top executives who have responded to Ahmad joining Airbnb include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Sam Altman wrote, "Delighted to see Ahmad join Airbnb! Airbnb is a rare combination of world-class design and engineering, and I am excited to see what Brian and Ahmad build together.

Companies that are the furthest from AI—like travel and experiences—are quite interesting in a world with lots of AI, although I am also sure bringing AI to Airbnb will make it much better."Sam Altman quoted Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky's post welcoming Ahmad. ".@Ahmad_Al_Dahle is joining as Airbnb's new CTO. I’m often asked about our AI strategy. We believe pairing great design with frontier technology will help us improve the way people experience travel.

Excited to build!," said Chesky in the post. It is not clear why exactly OpenAI CEO Altman commented on Meta exec joining Airbnb. As it is rare to see an exec publicly speaking about anotherkey exec joining a third company.

Airbnb CEO on AI Ahmad Al-Dahle's joining

Ahmad joins Airbnb at a time when the company is expanding its business beyond accommodations into tours, individual services and other products to drive new growth. The company is experimenting with boutique hotel bookings in several cities, as well as testing grocery delivery in a partnership with Instacart to let guests stock their kitchen ahead of check-in.

After adding social features to encourage user connections and incorporating AI into its customer service tool last year, Chesky said that he plans to launch AI search within the app in 2026 to help make better travel recommendations and mimic the interactive aspect of working with a human travel agent.Talking of the transition Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told Bloomberg in an interview. “This is a moment when now we’ve built a really strong foundation, but we’re in the midst of a technological revolution” that will play out over the next decade or longer, he said.

“We thought this was a really good time to pass the baton.”“What that means is moving away from an anonymous customer just searching, and making sure everyone’s search, everyone’s conversation is unique to them and that we take into account all prior conversations we ever had with you, all information we have.” he said. “It’s not going to look like old search, it’s not going to look like a chatbot. It’s going to have to marry the best of both worlds.” The interaction will be less text-based, with more visual components to help users more easily retrieve their preferred options from prior searches, he added.