Airbnb shares slid as much as 6% in extended trading on Thursday after the short-term home-rental company reported a smaller sum of nights and experience booked in the second quarter than analysts had projected.
Here’s how the company did:
Earnings: 98 cents per share, vs. 78 cents per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
Revenue: $2.48 billion, vs. $2.42 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
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Airbnb’s revenue grew 18% year over year in the quarter, according to a statement. Net income reached $650 million, compared with about $379 million, or 56 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.
The company reported $19.1 billion in gross booking value for the quarter. That was up 12% from the second quarter of last year and above the $18.99 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.
Airbnb said it had 115.1 million nights and experiences booked during the quarter, up almost 11%, but less than the 117.6 million StreetAccount consensus. Nights and experienced booked increased 19% in the first quarter.
In a letter to shareholders, Airbnb said the nights and experiences booked number was up against a tough comparison.
“We saw an improvement in year-over-year Nights and Experiences Booked growth during the quarter from 10% in April to 15% in June,” the company said. “In particular, we were encouraged by the acceleration in year-over-year nights in North America throughout the quarter, and the recovery in EMEA in June following challenging holiday comparisons in May.”
Gross booking value per night, at $166.01, was up 1% year over year.
With respect to guidance, Airbnb called for $3.3 billion to $3.4 billion in third-quarter revenue, or 14% to 18% growth. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had been looking for $3.22 billion. Management called for a “modest” sequential acceleration in nights and experiences booked.
Airbnb still sees plenty of service opportunities that could add to revenue growth, CEO Brian Chesky told analysts on a conference call. He said there are plenty of services people can buy when they stay in hotels and resorts that Airbnb has yet to make available to its guests.
He said an advertising platform is “obviously” one thing Airbnb could add, and the company could also start matching available hosts with people with homes who lack the time to host.
During the quarter Airbnb introduced Rooms in an effort to play up the appeal of affordable private bedrooms to rent out, at $67 per night on average.
Notwithstanding the after-hours move, Airbnb shares have risen about 64% so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500 stock index, which is up 17% over the same period.
Executives will discus the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 4:30 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.
Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It’s a $60 billion business.
One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren’t universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say.
A growing number of parents are also turning to cloth diapers, but they only make up about 20% of the U.S. market.
ZymoChem is attacking the diaper problem from a different angle. Harshal Chokhawala, CEO of ZymoChem, said that 60% to 80% of a typical diaper consists of fossil-based plastics. And half of that is an ingredient called super absorbent polymer, or SAP.
“What we have created is a low carbon footprint bio-based and biodegradable version of this super absorbent polymer,” Chokhawala said.
ZymoChem, with operations in San Leandro, California, and Burlington, Vermont, invented this new type of absorbent by using a fermentation process to convert a renewable resource — sugar — from corn into biodegradable materials. It’s similar to making beer.
“We’re at a point now where we’re very close to being at cost parity with fossil based manufacturing of super absorbents,” said Chokhawala.
The company’s drop-in absorbents can be added into other diapers, which makes it different from environmentally conscious companies like Charlie Banana, Kudos and Hiro, which sell their own brand of diapers.
ZymoChem doesn’t yet have a diaper product on the market. But Lindy Fishburne, managing partner at Breakout Ventures and an investor in the company, says it’s a scalable model.
“Being able to build and grow with biology allows us to unlock a circular economy and a supply chain that is no longer petro-derived, which opens up the opportunities of where you can manufacture and how you secure supply chains,” Fishburne said.
Other investors include Toyota Ventures, GS Futures, KDT Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Lululemon. The company has raised a total of $35 million.
The Lululemon partnership shows that it’s not just about diapers. ZymoChem’s bio-based materials can also be used in other hygiene products and in bio-based nylon. Lululemon recently said it will use it in some of its leggings, which were traditionally made with petroleum.