OpenAI has acquired Odessia, an AI travel agent that plans trips, compares fares and books reservations inside a chat interface, PYMNTS reported. Shares of online travel agencies fell on Tuesday, November 10, after the deal, according to Seeking Alpha as cited by PYMNTS: Expedia Group dropped nearly 4%, Tripadvisor more than 3% and Booking Holdings more than 2%. The report did not disclose a price or terms.
Founder Francis Davidson, who previously built hospitality company Sonder to $600 million in revenue, confirmed the acquisition on LinkedIn and said he will join OpenAI to lead its travel technology development. He launched Odessia in late 2025 with backing from Sequoia, angel investors and commercial travel partners, and it was built on OpenAI's GPT 5.5 and Codex models.
PYMNTS reported that Odessia processed about $60 million in travel volume in its first year. Davidson put it differently on LinkedIn: "Over $60M/year of travel was planned by Odessia over the past summer by tens of thousands of early adopters." PYMNTS also reported that Booking Holdings and Kayak have added conversational tools and native checkouts, and cited its own research finding that nearly 25% of consumers are comfortable letting AI plan travel itineraries.