Airbnb, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABNB) stock edged higher in premarket trading Thursday as investors weighed the company’s expanding artificial intelligence strategy and valuation.
Airbnb CEO Uses AI ‘Brain’
Chesky said Wednesday at the Skift Global Forum that he is using AI to understand Airbnb’s operations better and reduce meetings.
He said he built an AI-powered “brain” using 18,000 Keynote slides, 50,000 Google documents and other internal information.
“This intelligence layer means I now have total information,” Chesky said. “I’ve cut my meetings in half.”
Expands OpenAI Partnership
The broader push extends across Airbnb’s engineering and products. The company expanded its agreement with OpenAI, giving teams wider access to frontier models, including GPT-6 Astra.
Airbnb uses OpenAI models for software development, search, fraud prevention, customer support and insurance claims. CTO Ahmad Al-Dahle said development teams are shipping roughly 80% more features than a year ago.
Nearly 45% of customer-service issues that begin with Airbnb’s AI assistant are resolved without human intervention. Airbnb also plans to launch an AI agent in 2027 with an interface Chesky described as “much richer than a chatbot.”
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Airbnb Growth And Valuation In Focus
A peer comparison showed Airbnb trading at about 34.15 times earnings, below the Hotels, Restaurants & Leisure industry average of roughly 40.39.
Revenue growth stands at 16.54%, while Airbnb’s price-to-sales ratio of 6.93 remains elevated. Return on equity of 10.57% trails the industry average.
Airbnb carries a Buy consensus rating with an average price target of $179.
RBC Capital maintained an Outperform rating with a $195 target on Sept. 21. Citizens maintained Market Outperform and raised its target from $190 to $200 on Sept. 18, while Morgan Stanley assumed coverage at Equal-Weight with a $170 target on Sept. 16.
Technical Setup
Airbnb remains above its 200-day simple moving average of $142.40, preserving its longer-term uptrend, but trading below the 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day averages signals continued near-term weakness.
The relative strength index of 26.29 puts ABNB in oversold territory, suggesting the recent selling may be stretched, though that alone does not confirm a rebound.
Key resistance for Airbnb sits around $156.50, near the 100-day simple moving average of $153.20, where rebounds could face selling pressure.
On the downside, support is around $127.50, above the 52-week low of $110.81 and near a prior area where buyers stepped in.
Airbnb Price Action
ABNB Stock Price Activity: Airbnb shares were up 1.85% at $152.35 during premarket trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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