House Committees Probe Airbnb and Anysphere Over Chinese AI Model Use

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky may be in trouble. According to a report in Semafor, two Republican-led House committees are probing Airbnb and Anysphere, maker of AI coding platform Cursor, over their use of Chinese AI models.

According to the report, the House Homeland Security Committee and House China Select Committee have jointly sent letters to the company CEOs, requesting information on their use of AI models made by Chinese companies, why they decided to use these models, and communications with Chinese AI model companies.

These letters are reportedly signed by the committees' Republican chairs, John Moolenaar from Michigan and Andrew Garbarino from New York. The report adds that the companies' employees may be summoned for details related to these decisions to attend an in-person briefing on the matter.

As per the report, lawmakers have expressed concerns in the letter about national security risks of sharing wide swaths of data and information with AI companies in China, which often provide cheaper, open source tools compared with their American counterparts.

“The AI models these companies use are trained by China’s censorship regime and introduce hidden vulnerabilities that put Americans’ data and businesses at risk,” Moolenaar told Semafor.

Airbnb's customer service agent runs on Alibaba's Qwen AI model

In December 2025, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that he didn’t integrate his company's online travel app with OpenAI's ChatGPT because the company's connective tools aren't “quite ready” yet.

“We’re relying a lot on Alibaba’s Qwen model. It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” he said. “We use OpenAI's latest models, but we typically don't use them that much in production because there are faster and cheaper models.”

Airbnb CEO on why he said 'no' to his friend Sam Altman's AI tool ChatGPT

Airbnb CEO who Chesky, who is close friends with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said that Airbnb will monitor the development of ChatGPT's app integrations and may consider a tie-up in the future. He added that because Airbnb is a community with verified members, OpenAI will have to build a platform so robust that Airbnb's app can work within the ChatGPT chatbot in an “almost self-contained” manner.

In December last year, Airbnb unveiled an option for guests to share their Airbnb profile with other travelers after they book an experience. Users who have gone on the same tours can also now directly message one another — privacy safeguards are implemented where the conversation can only continue if the recipient accepts a message request, Airbnb said.