AIRBNB: 2Q25 BUSINESS UPDATE

Summary from the TLDR Founders newsletter

Airbnb's growth is slowing again - nights booked decelerated to 7% year-over-year, while competitor Booking grew 8% despite being twice Airbnb's size, with 309 million nights booked. Revenue grew 13% but the stock dropped 8% on weak guidance. The interesting part is CEO Brian Chesky's response. The company is pivoting to become more like Netflix than a search engine, with more bookings now coming from homepage recommendations than search. This lets it steer demand to markets with supply. After resisting for years, it is finally adding hotels and launching a loyalty program - plus authorizing $6 billion in buybacks on top of the $1 billion it just spent. The wildest bet is Services, where 60,000 people applied to offer everything from home chefs to yoga classes.