The 45-year-old co-founder of the short-term rental company said that the launch of ChatGPT made him wish he could return to his mid-20s, when he was building Airbnb. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has revealed that generative AI has changed how he views entrepreneurship.
“Until the launch of generative AI, ChatGPT, I said ‘Thank god I was born the time I did, because now is a tougher time,’” Chesky recently said on the Silicon Valley Girl podcast. “And then post-ChatGPT, part of me said, ‘I wish I was 26 again.’” The Airbnb CEO said he would consider exploring areas such as education and healthcare if he were starting out today. He also mentioned the possibility of building an “AI Disney” , suggesting that artificial intelligence could change storytelling and entertainment beyond chatbots and text-based tools. Chesky predicted that the AI era could produce hundreds of large companies like Anthropic, alongside “tens of millions” of smaller businesses. He said he initially felt unsure about experimenting with Claude Code, but an Airbnb employee familiar with it helped him.
Despite his enthusiasm, Chesky acknowledged that learning to use new AI tools can be intimidating. Chesky believes today’s AI tools let aspiring founders build products and businesses with fewer resources than they needed two decades ago.