airbnb Ahmad Aldar, former head of generative artificial intelligence, was appointed. meta platformCEO Brian Chesky announced the company’s new head of technology on Wednesday.
“I’m really, really excited about Ahmad because we have the opportunity to make AI good for travel and make AI good for e-commerce,” Chesky told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Aldahl previously led Meta’s old GenAI division and was later named co-head of AI products when the social media company split the division due to poor reviews of the developer’s Llama 4 model. Meta later hired Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang as part of a $14.3 billion deal to strengthen its AI strategy.
Former technology chief Ali Balogh resigned in December after more than seven years with the company. He joined Airbnb in 2018. google.
Airbnb is in the midst of a major transformation as it seeks to move beyond its reputation as a short-term rental platform.
The company overhauled its app in May and introduced services like catering and personal training to the platform. The company has since added direct messaging and updated its AI chatbot.
“AI works 24/7, speaks every language, and learns from the actions of millions of customers to help you. … And with Ahmad, you’ll be able to move up the funnel to travel search,” Chesky told Sorkin. “And imagine that one day Airbnb becomes your travel concierge, the concierge that stays with you throughout your journey. That’s where we want to be.”
Chesky, a close friend of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, also shares the desire to integrate ChatGPT into the platform. But he told CNBC in October that chatbots are “not robust enough.”
Aldar fits into the company’s mission of using its technology and AI to power relationships, Chesky said in the post.
He said, “We share our belief that technology should serve people, not the other way around, and its greatest purpose is to bring us closer together.”
Mr. Aldahl previously spent 16 years there. appleworking on special projects and across the Imaging and Sensing Technology Group. He graduated from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
“He marries big ideas with technical depth, appreciates design, and believes that engineering should be a true strategic partner in everything we do,” Chesky wrote in a blog post.
CNBC’s Jacqueline Korba contributed to this article.
