Airbnb announces Ahmad Al-Dahle as Chief Technology Officer

Airbnb Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky shared the following email with employees around the globe today:

Hey team,

I'm excited to share that Ahmad Al-Dahle is joining as our new Chief Technology Officer.

Ahmad is one of the world's leading experts in AI. He joins us from Meta, where he led Generative AI and the team behind the Llama family of open source models. I've known Ahmad for a couple of years, and I want to share more about who he is and why he's the right leader to join Airbnb at such a pivotal moment.

Ahmad grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, one of the coldest places in the world. It was so cold that he would often stay inside playing video games with his friends, which is where his interest in computers and programming began. Before long, he was building his own games and computers.

He studied engineering at the University of Waterloo, and in 2005, while still a student, he began working at Apple on the iPhone, two years before it launched. After graduating, he joined full time. At Apple, Ahmad worked on the frontier of technology. He was one of the core technologists behind the iPhone's display and multitouch systems. He later worked in Apple's core technology platform group, shipping major features in nearly a dozen devices, including the first Apple Watch. In 2014, Ahmad created and led Apple's autonomous technology group, responsible for developing the core AI systems for the company's self-driving car project.

In 2020, Ahmad joined Meta to lead mapping and applied AI within Reality Labs. In early 2023, following the launch of ChatGPT, he founded Meta's Generative AI group. He led the launch of Llama, a family of open-source AI models downloaded over one billion times with more than 60,000 derivative models, helping catalyze the modern open-source AI movement. He also led the teams bringing AI features to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Ahmad and his wife, Whitney, are parents to twin three-year-old girls, whose birthdays are today! He has many fun facts, but my favorite is that he and Whitney got married at an Airbnb. They live in the Bay Area, and Ahmad will be working out of the San Francisco office most days.

Ahmad is joining Airbnb at a pivotal moment.

Technology is shaping our lives in ways we never fully intended. Our phones, once tools for creativity and connection, have become vortexes for our attention. We spend hours scrolling feeds, often watching other people's lives instead of living our own, and consuming content that is increasingly generated by AI.

In a world becoming more artificial, people are craving what's real: real connection with real people in the real world. No company is better positioned to meet this need than Airbnb. We have a rare opportunity, and responsibility, to shape how people travel, live, and interact with AI in a way that strengthens human connection and draws people into the physical world, not away from it. This isn't just a technical challenge; it's a human one. And it requires leadership that understands both the power of technology and how to responsibly use it.

That's why Ahmad's decision to join Airbnb matters. He connects big ideas with technical depth, highly values design, and believes engineering should be a true strategic partner in everything we do. More importantly, he shares our belief that technology should serve people-not the other way around-and that its highest purpose is to bring us closer together.

I couldn't be more excited to welcome Ahmad to Airbnb. I'll be introducing him tomorrow during our World@ meeting. Please join me in giving him a warm welcome. I can't wait for what we'll build together, and how we can make the world feel a little more human.

Brian