Airbnb announces Ahmad Al-Dahle as Chief Technology Officer

Airbnb (ABNB) Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky shared the following email with employees: “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… He studied engineering at the University of Waterloo, and in 2005, while still a student, he began working at Apple (AAPL) 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… 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.”