Travel Agent

OpenAI has acquired Odessia, a one-year-old AI travel agent startup, with founder Francis Davidson joining OpenAI to help explore the travel business. Odessia had raised a $6M pre-seed led by Sequoia and launched an AI itinerary-planning service five months ago. OpenAI disclosed no concrete travel product or roadmap, saying only that travel is a frequent ChatGPT query topic.

Airbnb confirmed during its Q3 2026 earnings call that it is building an AI travel agent aimed at letting users plan trips and book stays through natural-language interaction. The project remains early-stage, with no disclosed model choices, task scope, or launch timeline.