Credit: Henry Franklin / Shutterstock.com OpenAI has acquired Odessia, an AI travel agent founded by Sonder co-founder Francis Davidson, and shut down the service on the same day. Davidson announced the deal in a post on X on Tuesday, saying he would join OpenAI “to focus on the future of travel”. https://t.co/F3Wq6IJ6rJ — Francis Davidson (@FDavidsonT) November 10, 2026 “I’m thrilled to announce that Odessia was acquired by OpenAI, and that I will be joining the team to focus on the future of travel,” started the announcement Francis Davidson. The acquisition also coincided with OpenAI’s launch of Businesses in ChatGPT, which allows companies to sell through the chatbot. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch, describing Davidson as “a proven founder who has built multiple businesses to help people travel”.
Odessia had attracted a sizeable group of early users in a short time. Davidson said tens of thousands of people used the service over the summer to plan more than $60m in annualised travel. Yet the start-up’s website now tells visitors that the service “is no longer available”. The company was less than a year old, and it raised $6M in June in a round led by Sequoia, had a team of eight in San Francisco and opened to the public on October 14.
Its free concierge service allowed customers to arrange trips through text messages. Odessia could plan and book flights, hotels and full itineraries within a single conversation. It ran on OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Codex models and held IATA accreditation, which allowed it to issue airline tickets and access private hotel rates and benefits. For OpenAI, the acquisition brings a working travel-booking operation and the expertise behind it, rather than an established source of revenue.
Investors reacted to the possibility that OpenAI could eventually compete more directly with online travel agencies. Moreover, the market responded, and Expedia shares fell as much as 5% on Tuesday, Booking Holdings dropped up to 3%, and Airbnb lost around 3.5%, according to Investing.com. There is an obvious complication: several of those companies already work with OpenAI. Booking.com and Expedia were among the first travel platforms to bring their apps into ChatGPT, while KAYAK is also an OpenAI customer or partner.
Travel companies including Delta Vacations have also bought ChatGPT advertising through an Amazon Ads pilot. Until now, ChatGPT has largely directed users to external booking services rather than handling travel sales itself. For Davidson, the acquisition comes after a difficult end to his previous business. He co-founded Sonder, an apartment-hotel company, in 2014 while still a student. The company went public in 2022, but later lost its partnership with Marriott and entered bankruptcy proceedings in November 2025.
At its peak, Davidson said, Sonder had reached $600m in annual revenue. His announcement also offered a glimpse into how he built Odessia. He described a small team directing multiple AI agents, said his own use of agents had increased “25x through 2026”, and summed up the company’s working philosophy as “the best process is no process”. OpenAI has acquired a start-up that went from launch to an accredited travel-booking service in less than a year, along with a founder who has experience building a business in the travel industry.
The service itself is already offline, but what OpenAI plans to do with the technology and whether it will eventually handle bookings directly through ChatGPT remain to be seen. Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
Leave a Reply