Airbnb is developing an AI agent designed to act as a travel agent, and it plans to put the tool in front of guests in the first half of 2027. The company disclosed the project in its shareholder letter released alongside its third-quarter 2026 earnings.
What AI travel agent is Airbnb building?
Airbnb said it is building a new interface that offers a custom AI experience and "builds the interface around your question." The company argues that a "traditional chatbot is the right way to plan a trip." Instead, the experience would populate an interface, presumably within the Airbnb app, with elements relevant to a user's inquiry. The agent will be able to add maps, photos, itineraries and comparisons in real time.
Can Airbnb's AI travel agent book trips?
Airbnb says the agent will also let users take action directly within that experience. That most likely means travelers could book rentals from the elements the agent places on the page. The company has not made clear whether users will also be able to use its other services from the start. Airbnb has added several offerings to its app over the years, including grocery deliveries, car rentals and destination-specific rentals like boats and ski gear.
"Over time, we want our agent to help guests plan their entire trip in one place, across homes, hotels, services, experiences and more," the company said.
The travel agent would build on AI features Airbnb has already introduced. A couple of months before the earnings report, the company launched AI search, which lets users make inquiries in natural language. It also rolled out AI-generated descriptions for listings.
What are Perplexity Teammates?
Perplexity is making a similar push, aimed at work rather than vacations. The startup has launched a set of always-on AI agents it calls "Teammates." They can take on multiple roles within a workspace and pull in existing projects, skills and memory from the Perplexity tools a user already relies on.
Teammates connect to Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can deploy agents on a user's device to complete tasks. Perplexity says Teammates "build on top" of Computer by adding the ability to collaborate and finish "ongoing, large-scale work." Users can assign each Teammate a different job, and the Teammates can perform those jobs at the same time. Perplexity compares the feature to similar offerings from OpenAI, called Dots, and Anthropic, called Claude Duet. Perplexity's version costs considerably more, however. It requires a subscription to the $200-a-month Max plan.
Each Teammate has its own thread. Users can track a Teammate's progress in the Perplexity app and interact with it in Slack.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas described where he expects the product to go. "Over time, we envision every org having hundreds of teammates working for each person," he said on X.
The two announcements point to the same shift in the AI market. Both companies are moving past question-and-answer chatbots toward software that builds custom interfaces or runs several jobs at once to get work done. Airbnb has not announced pricing for its travel agent, and it has not said how the agent will handle bookings beyond rentals. Perplexity's Teammates are already available to paying Max subscribers, which puts the company's agent technology in front of users now, while Airbnb's tool is still months from launch.
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