What is Airbnb?
Travel marketplace company with $12.2B 2025 revenue, headquartered in San Francisco, California.
- Category
- Travel marketplace
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California
- Founded
- 2007
- Employees
- Approximately 7,000
- Total funding
- Public company; no venture funding profile
- Status
- NASDAQ: ABNB
What is Airbnb?
Airbnb is a public travel marketplace company with $12.2B 2025 revenue. It operates at enterprise scale from San Francisco, California, serving customers through a large physical network, digital channels, and specialized operating teams.
Airbnb is a public travel marketplace company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It operates a global marketplace for stays, experiences, and host services with more than 5M hosts, millions of active listings, and marketplace demand across over 220 countries and regions, and its latest public reporting shows $12.2B 2025 revenue with Approximately 7,000 employees or team members.
The company sells and operates across Stays marketplace, Airbnb Experiences, Host tools, AirCover, Payments, Guest identity and trust, with buyers, customers, or partners distributed across a large physical and digital operating footprint. Its market position is shaped by network density, brand trust, operational reliability, pricing discipline, loyalty or contract economics, and the ability to coordinate frontline operations with enterprise technology.
For B2B sellers, Airbnb is a sophisticated enterprise account rather than a single-department buyer. The strongest motions usually attach to financeable outcomes: better uptime, lower claims or disruption, higher conversion, stronger yield management, faster support, safer operations, more resilient infrastructure, or cleaner data for planning and compliance.
What does Airbnb offer?
Airbnb offers Stays marketplace, Airbnb Experiences, Host tools, AirCover, Payments and related services for consumers, businesses, partners, or asset owners.
- Stays marketplace· Offering
- Airbnb Experiences· Offering
- Host tools· Offering
- AirCover· Offering
- Payments· Offering
- Guest identity and trust· Offering
- Airbnb for business travel· Offering
- Mobile app· Offering
How does Airbnb make money?
Airbnb makes money through guest service fees, host service fees, payments economics, experiences, promoted or enhanced services, and marketplace take-rate on gross booking value.
Airbnb makes money through guest service fees, host service fees, payments economics, experiences, promoted or enhanced services, and marketplace take-rate on gross booking value. The company does not have SaaS-style seat tiers; customer prices are transaction, contract, location, or itinerary dependent and are governed by most guests pay a service fee shown at checkout, many individual hosts pay about a 3% host fee, some professional hosts use host-only fee structures, and total price varies by nightly rate, cleaning fee, taxes, and currency.
Growth is driven by volume, mix, pricing power, capacity utilization, network efficiency, loyalty or contract retention, digital conversion, partner economics, and disciplined capital spending. Because Airbnb has public-company scale, small improvements in conversion, asset turns, labor productivity, maintenance, claims, fraud, energy, procurement, or customer retention can be financially meaningful.
Budget owners tend to fund technology when it improves measurable operating KPIs or protects the customer experience. Vendor positioning should map to the buyer's P&L: revenue management, throughput, automation, risk reduction, uptime, compliance, cybersecurity, customer data, workforce productivity, and integration with existing operational systems.
Who leads Airbnb?
Airbnb is led by Brian Chesky, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, with finance, operating, commercial, and technology leaders managing the core enterprise buying centers.
- Brian CheskyCo-founder and Chief Executive OfficerCEO since foundingLeads product, brand, and marketplace strategy.
- Nathan BlecharczykCo-founder and Chief Strategy OfficerCo-founderOwns strategic initiatives and long-term platform expansion.
- Dave StephensonChief Business OfficerSenior executiveLeads business operations and growth initiatives after serving as CFO.
- Ellie MertzChief Financial OfficerCFO since 2024Leads finance, investor relations, and capital allocation.
How do you contact Airbnb's leadership?
Airbnb publishes investor, media, customer, or partner contact routes, but a verified personal executive email pattern is not public. Use the official contact route shown here and avoid treating any inferred personal address as verified.
No verified public personal-executive email format; use ir@airbnb.comHow much funding has Airbnb raised?
Airbnb is a public company (NASDAQ: ABNB) and is not best described by venture funding raised.
Airbnb is a mature public company, not a venture-backed startup with priced seed, Series A, or late-stage private rounds. Its relevant capital history is public equity, debt markets, operating cash flow, lease or equipment finance, and acquisition financing rather than disclosed VC funding.
The major capital milestones are: 2009 Seed and early venture rounds (Sequoia and Y Combinator-backed marketplace begins scaling); 2011 Large growth rounds (International expansion accelerates); 2015 Late-stage financing (Valuation rises with global supply and demand); 2020 IPO (Airbnb lists on Nasdaq); 2025 $12.2B revenue (Profitable public marketplace funds product expansion). As of June 2026, the most useful buyer signal is not a private valuation but $12.2B 2025 revenue, NASDAQ: ABNB, and the scale of its ongoing capital program.
For sellers, this means budget exists but is governed by mature procurement, security, compliance, integration, finance, and operating-leader review. Winning opportunities need to connect to measurable revenue lift, yield, service reliability, productivity, customer experience, regulatory compliance, asset utilization, or cost reduction.
How did Airbnb get here?
Airbnb reached its current scale through founding, network expansion, public-market access, acquisitions or strategic shifts, and recent public-company execution.
- 2007AirBed & Breakfast foundedAirBed & Breakfast founded helped shape Airbnb's current market position.
- 2008Launches during political conventionsLaunches during political conventions helped shape Airbnb's current market position.
- 2011International expansion acceleratesInternational expansion accelerates helped shape Airbnb's current market position.
- 2020IPO on NasdaqIPO on Nasdaq helped shape Airbnb's current market position.
- 2023Rooms and guest-favorite product updatesRooms and guest-favorite product updates helped shape Airbnb's current market position.
- 2025Reports double-digit Q4 revenue and GBV growthReports double-digit Q4 revenue and GBV growth helped shape Airbnb's current market position.
Who are Airbnb's competitors?
Airbnb competes with large public and private operators that overlap in customers, routes, assets, channels, brands, or consumer travel demand.
- Booking.comBooking.com competes with Airbnb for overlapping customers, lanes, travelers, owners, or discretionary spend, but differs by network footprint, brand mix, pricing model, or channel strategy.
- ExpediaExpedia competes with Airbnb for overlapping customers, lanes, travelers, owners, or discretionary spend, but differs by network footprint, brand mix, pricing model, or channel strategy.
- VrboVrbo competes with Airbnb for overlapping customers, lanes, travelers, owners, or discretionary spend, but differs by network footprint, brand mix, pricing model, or channel strategy.
- Marriott InternationalMarriott International competes with Airbnb for overlapping customers, lanes, travelers, owners, or discretionary spend, but differs by network footprint, brand mix, pricing model, or channel strategy.
- Hilton WorldwideHilton Worldwide competes with Airbnb for overlapping customers, lanes, travelers, owners, or discretionary spend, but differs by network footprint, brand mix, pricing model, or channel strategy.
Airbnb — frequently asked questions
