Airbnb, Inc. (ABNB) Business

Item 1. Business

Overview

Airbnb was founded in 2007 when two hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown into a global community of over 5 million hosts who have welcomed over 2.5 billion guest arrivals in almost every country and region across the globe. Every day, hosts offer unique stays, experiences, and services that enable guests to connect with communities in a more authentic way. We operate a global marketplace connecting guests with stays, experiences, and services, collectively in over 220 countries and regions. Our offerings have expanded to include services and redesigned experiences, which launched in May 2025.

We operate with five key stakeholders in mind: our employees, shareholders, hosts, guests, and the communities we serve. Our commitment to making long-term decisions that benefit all these stakeholders is fundamental to our sustained success.

Our Long-Term Growth Strategy

Our key strategic priorities include making our service better, bringing Airbnb to more parts of the world, and expanding what we offer. Over the past several years, we have introduced hundreds of new features and upgrades to our platform spanning nearly every part of our service from pricing to quality to customer support. Additionally, we are leveraging our global markets strategy, which includes a more localized approach to product updates and marketing to raise awareness and consideration in less mature markets. We are also extending our platform beyond stays with new offerings, such as Airbnb Services and redesigned experiences, with plans to continue to expand our business beyond travel accommodations using our multi-year product roadmap to help drive long-term growth.

Our Platform

Our Platform for Hosts

We built our platform to seamlessly onboard new hosts, especially those who previously had not considered hosting. We partner with hosts throughout the process of setting up their listings and provide them with a robust suite of tools to successfully manage their listings, including scheduling, merchandising, integrated payments, community support, host protections, pricing tools, and feedback from reviews. In addition, we provide the Co-Host Network, which connects potential and existing hosts with co-hosts who can help manage their listings. Co-hosts are experienced hosts who provide personalized support based on the hosts’ needs, from listing setup to managing bookings and communicating with guests. In 2025, we continued to deliver host improvements, including updates to cancellation policies that make it easier for hosts to earn income, better pricing tools and price tips, and a refreshed messages tab.

Our Platform for Guests

Our website and mobile app provide our guests with an engaging and intuitive way to discover and book a diverse selection of homes, experiences, and services. Over the last several years, we have launched a significant number of new features and upgrades to help guests find affordable, high quality and reliable stays, experiences, and services across the platform. In 2025, we launched a redesigned app experience featuring unified search and booking for all offerings, artificial intelligence (“AI”)-powered personalization, and integrated social features that allow guests to connect with co-travelers or experience attendees. Guests benefit from flexible payment options, including Pay Less Upfront and Reserve Now, Pay Later. Additionally, guests can utilize enhanced search tools and improved maps to help find high-quality, reliable options that fit their preferences.

Our System of Trust

The system for trust that we designed continues to include core components such as host and guest reviews, account protection, risk scoring, secure payments, a nondiscrimination policy, watchlist and background checks in certain jurisdictions, cleanliness, fraud and scam prevention, insurance and similar protections, booking restrictions, an urgent safety line, a 24/7 neighborhood support line, anti-party technology, and a guest refund policy. In 2025, we made further investments in technology and processes to enhance trust and safety across our platform.

We offer protection for our hosts through AirCover for Hosts, which includes property damage protection of up to $3 million per stay, liability coverage of up to $1 million per occurrence for third-party claims of personal injury or property damage, deep cleaning protection, and pet damage protection.

We also offer AirCover for guests, which provides support for serious issues with a booking or during a stay, including host cancellations, inability to check-in, inaccurate listings, and a 24-hour safety support line.

During 2025, we expanded the use of AI-powered customer service and support features to help more quickly and effectively resolve issues for both hosts and guests. AI capabilities now assist in risk assessment and rapid fraud and scam detection, supplementing our existing review, watchlist, and background check procedures. We also enhanced automation in case management, supporting more timely response and resolution for urgent situations on the platform. With further initiatives under development, we are working to create additional features to strengthen the trust and safety on our platform.

4

Table of Contents

Our Technology

Our technology platform powers our two-sided global marketplace and supports the broad, evolving needs of our network of hosts and guests. In 2025, we substantially completed a rebuild of our technology stack, enhancing scalability, reliability, and the pace of innovation across the platform. This modern architecture enables us to move rapidly in responding to changing customer needs while maintaining stability and correctness.

Given the nature of the business, our technology platform has broad and complex requirements:

•Support of secure global payments. It enables guests and hosts to transact in their preferred currency across approximately 20 local payment methods, with advanced protections against fraud and money laundering.

•Delivery of global community support. It provides multilingual, real-time community support, including responsive city-specific regulatory support.

•Delivery of deep business insights. It delivers deep business intelligence insights and robust analytics to manage marketplace performance, optimize pricing, and maximize occupancy for our hosts.

•Incorporation of AI and machine learning. It incorporates expanded AI and machine learning capabilities, which are integral to key areas, from fraud detection, to personalized listing matching and enabling customized and real-time community support.

•Operation of a microservices architecture. We operate a microservices architecture and are evolving our foundational components to enable us to move rapidly in response to evolving customer needs without sacrificing correctness or stability.

As we continue to evolve our foundational technology, we are focused on the following broad capabilities:

•Data management systems that are designed to support user privacy, analytics, and machine learning and AI-driven insights.

•Service reliability leading to best-in-class performance centered on availability, latency, business continuity, security, testability, observability, operability, and agility.

•Cloud support focusing on robust capabilities for granular attribution and usage patterns to realize efficiency gains.

These continued technological investments aim to create a robust platform that allows us to more quickly adapt to the needs of our hosts and guests around the world and increase the productivity of our product development organization.

Our Marketing

Our marketing strategy combines brand marketing, communications, performance marketing, and strategic partnerships to increase awareness among existing and potential hosts and guests, demonstrating what makes Airbnb distinct. In 2025, we focused on unified brand campaigns promoting our full suite of offerings: homes, experiences, and services, showcasing where guests can seamlessly book all three on Airbnb. We also leverage select sponsorships and co‑marketing collaborations with cultural institutions, sports and entertainment organizations, destinations, and media platforms to amplify our brand, align with key cultural moments, and engage our community globally. Our global communications team coordinates with partners across press, policy, and social media to share timely news and drive engagement in support of our brand strategy. While performance marketing remains a component of our multi-faceted approach, the strength of Airbnb’s brand and our communication strategy has allowed us to maintain lower reliance on paid marketing channels.

Our Human Capital

We consider the management of our global talent to be essential to the ongoing success of our business. As of December 31, 2025, we had approximately 8,200 employees.

Consistent with prior years, we relied on a global network of approximately 13,000 third-party workers as of December 31, 2025, to support the majority of our community support contacts. Our internal community support employees focus on managing complex and sensitive issues, while enablement teams support all community-facing teams and partners.

Attracting, developing, and retaining talent from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences remains critical for delivering innovative products and serving our stakeholders globally. Through our hiring process, we commit to finding the most qualified candidates for each role while fostering inclusion and striving to eliminate bias. We continue to invest in programs that support all employee growth and learning throughout the employee lifecycle.

Our “Live and Work Anywhere” policy allows for the vast majority of our employees to work remotely, supporting our ability to expand our talent pool well beyond the commuting range of our physical offices. We believe this allows us to attract the best employees, as it helps us to have a broader and more diverse range of qualified candidates for any given position. We continue to promote employee connection and alignment with our business priorities through regular collaboration, including in-person sessions at offices or off-site locations, reinforcing both our remote flexibility and our focus on team cohesion tied to our product roadmap.

Climate Change

We continue to pursue our goal of operating as a “net zero” company for our global corporate operations by year end 2030, reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with our corporate operations across Scope 1 (direct emissions from stationary combustion and

5

Table of Contents

refrigerants), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity, purchased electricity from diesel generators, onsite renewable electricity and purchased direct heat (market-based)), and select Scope 3 categories as currently defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (these select Scope 3 categories are purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel- and energy-related activities (not included in Scope 1 or Scope 2), waste generated in operations, business travel, employee commuting, and upstream leased assets). To help meet our goals, we continue to advance decarbonization initiatives designed to make our corporate operations more sustainable.

Alongside decarbonization in furtherance of our goal, we purchase carbon credits and we expect to continue to do so to ultimately achieve our goals in the long term. We aim to prioritize projects that meet our internal criteria and provide co-benefits, such as improved biodiversity, economic development, or improved community services and infrastructure.

Regulations

We are subject to an evolving array of laws, regulations, and rules at the local, city, state, and national levels worldwide that impact short-term and long-term rental, home sharing, and related business activities. While many jurisdictions have enacted or updated legislation on short-term rentals, others may do so in the future.

We seek to work with governments to establish clear, fair, and workable home sharing rules to create clarity for our hosts; however, certain cities have passed onerous restrictions on short-term rentals. For example, New York City passed regulations in 2023, which resulted in a de facto ban of short-term rental activities. Other smaller cities have also passed onerous restrictions on short-term rentals. We will continue to collaborate with policymakers to implement sensible legislation around the world and/or dispute regulations that unreasonably restrict the right to host.

Beyond short-term rental regulations, we are also subject to a wide spectrum of laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance governing our business practices. These include those related to the Internet, Internet access, e-commerce, and electronic devices, and those involving taxation, privacy, data privacy, data security, insurance, pricing, content, advertising, discrimination, consumer protection, employment, protection of minors, copyrights, distribution, messaging, mobile communications, use of AI, electronic device certification, electronic waste, electronic contracts, communications, competition, and unfair commercial practices. We are also subject to laws, regulations, and rules governing the provision of online payment services, the design and operation of our platform, and the operations, characteristics, and quality of our platform and services. Additionally, we are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the United States (federal, state, and local) and numerous foreign jurisdictions.

Our payments platform is subject to various laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance, including those governing cross-border and domestic money transmission and funds transfers, stored value and prepaid access, foreign exchange, data privacy, data security, cybersecurity, banking secrecy, payment services (including payment processing and settlement services), consumer protection, economic and trade sanctions, anti-corruption and anti-bribery, and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing.

Our business collects, processes, and uses the personal data of individuals across the globe. As a result, we must comply with certain laws on data privacy and data security regulating the collection, storage, handling, use, disclosure, transfer, security, and other processing of personal data. We take a variety of technical and organizational security measures and other procedures and protocols designed to protect personal data, including data pertaining to hosts, guests, employees, and others.

Legal requirements relating to the collection, storage, handling, use, disclosure, transfer, security and other processing of personal data continue to evolve, and regulatory scrutiny in this area is increasing around the world. This increases the complexity of compliance requirements, may limit offerings, and result in additional expenses while also diverting attention and resources from other projects. Regulators around the world continue to propose more stringent data privacy and data security laws, and these laws are rapidly increasing in number, complexity, enforcement, fines, and penalties. Data privacy, data security and AI laws and their interpretations continue to develop and are inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

As we continue to expand the reach of our brand into additional markets, we will be increasingly subject to additional laws, rules, regulations, policies, legal interpretations, and regulatory guidance. For additional information, see Note 13, Commitments and Contingencies – Legal and Regulatory Matters – Regulatory Matters, to our consolidated financial statements included in Item 8 of Part I of this Annual Report on Form 10-K and Item 1A. Risk Factors of Part I of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Seasonality

Our business is seasonal, reflecting typical global travel patterns. In a typical year, Nights and Seats Booked are highest in the first, second, and third quarters and lowest in the fourth quarter, with the peak travel season occurring in the third quarter across North America and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (“EMEA”).

Gross Booking Value (“GBV”) generally follows the same seasonal trends as Nights and Seats Booked. Because revenue is recognized when guest check-ins occur, revenue, and Adjusted Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (“EBITDA”) have historically been highest in the third quarter and lowest in the first quarter. Holiday timing, such as Easter, and other events can also shift quarterly performance.

Seasonality in GBV also affects Free Cash Flow (“FCF”). Higher GBV in the first half of the year typically results in increased unearned fees and higher FCF. During the third quarter, GBV is typically lower and check-ins reach their peak, resulting in decreased unearned fees. GBV and FCF are generally the lowest in the fourth quarter.

See the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations — Key Business Metrics and Non-GAAP Financial Measures” included in Item 7 of Part II of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for definitions of our key business metrics.

6

Table of Contents

Competition

We operate in a highly competitive environment. As we seek to expand our community globally, we face competition in attracting hosts and guests.

Competition for Hosts

We compete to attract and retain hosts to and on our platform to list their homes, experiences, and services, as hosts have a range of options for doing so. We compete for hosts based on many factors including the volume of bookings generated by guests, ease of use of our platform, the service fees we charge, host protections, such as those included in AirCover for Hosts, our brand, and community support.

Competition for Guests

We compete to attract and retain guests to and on our platform, as guests have a range of options to find and book accommodations, experiences, and services. We compete for guests based on many factors, including unique inventory and availability of listings, the value and all-in cost of host offerings on our platform relative to other options, our brand, ease of use of our platform, the trust and safety of our platform, and community support.

Our competitors include:

•online travel agencies (“OTAs”), such as Booking Holdings (including the brand Booking.com), Expedia Group (including the brands Expedia and VRBO), Trip.com Group, and other regional OTAs;

•internet search engines, such as Google and those powered by AI, including its travel search products;

•hotel chains, such as Marriott, Hilton, Accor, and Wyndham, as well as boutique hotel chains and independent hotels;

•property management companies;

•online platforms offering experiences and activities, such as Viator, GetYourGuide, and Klook; and

•providers in the highly fragmented guest services industry, which include many vertical-specific marketplaces that offer photography, beauty, spa, fitness, food, and other services.

Our Intellectual Property

Our intellectual property is an important component of our business. To establish and protect our proprietary rights, we rely on a combination of patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, domain names, social media handles, know-how, license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, employee disclosure and invention assignment agreements, and other intellectual property and contractual rights.

We have a substantial patent portfolio, consisting of issued patents and pending patent applications (“patent assets”) from the United States and multiple foreign jurisdictions. The portfolio includes both organically grown and acquired patent assets. We own a trademark portfolio with protections around the world for our primary brands — AIRBNB and our Bélo logo, for other brands or protectable brand elements important to our business, including but not limited to Rausch, our primary corporate color, localizations, translations, and transliterations of our primary brands, sub brands including AirCover, and brands associated with businesses we have acquired, including HotelTonight. We have registered domain names that we use in or relate to our business, such as the airbnb.com domain name and country code top-level domain name equivalents.

Available Information

Our website address is www.airbnb.com. Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website does not constitute part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov. Our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”) are also available free of charge on our investor relations website (investors.airbnb.com) as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. In addition, we routinely post other information, which could be deemed to be material to investors, on our investor relations website. Information regarding our sustainability initiatives is also available on our website. Information on our website, including the information published in our corporate responsibility and sustainability reports, is not incorporated by reference in this Report.

We webcast our quarterly results calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, and press and earnings releases, as part of our investor relations website. The contents of these websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file.