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Who is Brian Chesky, the Airbnb founder worth US$8.6 billion? He is pals with Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and ChatGPT’s Sam Altman, and was called one of the US’ most eligible billionaires

Who is Brian Chesky, the Airbnb founder worth US$8.6 billion? Photo: @cleverpodcast/Instagram
Who is Brian Chesky, the Airbnb founder worth US$8.6 billion? Photo: @cleverpodcast/Instagram

  • When New Yorker Brian Chesky and his friend Joe Gebbia had the idea to rent out an airbed in their San Francisco flat in 2007, they could never have dreamed how things would turn out
  • One of the richest people in the world, Chesky now gets bodybuilding tips from The Terminator and leadership advice from Obama, and has signed Bill and Melinda Gates’ Giving Pledge

If, like us, you always pictured Silicon Valley’s key players sitting around in trendy San Francisco coffee shops giving each other advice on world domination, billionaire to billionaire – it turns out you were probably right.
In a recent interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Open AI founder Sam Altman admitted that it’s Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky who has been helping him navigate the politics and policy of the company he has created.
OpenAI founder Sam Altman and his friend Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, onstage at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. Photo: @NBCNews/YouTube
OpenAI founder Sam Altman and his friend Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, onstage at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. Photo: @NBCNews/YouTube
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“Brian was the person who would just sit down with me for three hours every other week, and give me a list and say, ‘Here’s the five things you got to do,’” Altman told the audience in late June. “And I learned to just always shut up and follow the advice.”

So just who is Brian Chesky – the man who’s changed the way the world travels, and seems to be having a say in the future of AI too …

What’s Brian Chesky’s family background?

Brian Chesky (right), one of the founders of Airbnb, identifies as “an artist”. Photo: @bchesky/Instagram
Brian Chesky (right), one of the founders of Airbnb, identifies as “an artist”. Photo: @bchesky/Instagram

Originally from Niskayuna in upstate New York, Chesky’s parents Deborah and Robert were both social workers, according to his interview with the Financial Times. By his own admission, he “came from a pretty normal nondescript background” but told Steven Bartlett on his Diary of a CEO podcast that there was one thing “that most defined me – and that was that I was an artist”. His passion led him to study industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he met Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.

 

When did Brian Chesky found Airbnb?

Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb in 2008. Photo: @trajectoryventures/Instagram
Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb in 2008. Photo: @trajectoryventures/Instagram

After graduating from university, Chesky moved first to LA, then to San Francisco, per Business Insider, and shared a flat with his pal Gebbia. When a design conference came to town in 2007 causing a shortage of hotels, the pair had the idea to rent out an air bed in their flat to make some cash. By 2008, they had registered the domain name airbedandbreakfast.com, brought on another friend, Nathan Blecharczyk – and the rest is history.