OpenAI has acquired Odessia, an AI travel agent founded by Francis Davidson. Davidson says he is now working for OpenAI and helping the AI lab think about the future of travel. The company has not disclosed the deal terms, and the arrangement appears to be an acqui-hire.
Odessia and its short life
Davidson framed the transaction around the work he had done building Odessia through teams of AI agents. The startup was about a year old, had raised a $6 million pre-seed round led by Sequoia, and launched its AI travel agent roughly five months ago. Davidson said early users used the tool to plan millions of dollars’ worth of travel. The product has already been shut down.
OpenAI’s travel position
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the hire and said the company was pleased to welcome Davidson. The spokesperson described him as a founder who had built multiple businesses around travel and said OpenAI was excited that he had chosen to build with the company.
OpenAI has not announced any new travel-specific product or plan. The lab does count Booking.com, Expedia, and KAYAK among its customers or partners. Travel is also one of the areas people use personal AI assistants for, and OpenAI mentioned travel as one possible use when it launched its ChatGPT agent in July 2025.
ChatGPT usage and travel queries
The spokesperson said travel is one of the subjects chatbot users ask about frequently. The spokesperson also said 1.2 billion people turn to ChatGPT each week for help with everyday tasks, including understanding their health, figuring out what to make for dinner, building a budget, and planning a trip. OpenAI said it sees an opportunity to make those experiences even more useful.
Davidson’s earlier travel company
Davidson is already known in the travel industry for founding Sonder as a college student in 2014. Sonder was compared with Airbnb because it focused on short-term leasing of upscale apartments in major cities around the world. The pandemic hit the company hard, and as it worked out of that period it went public through a SPAC. Davidson later said in a June 2025 post announcing his resignation as CEO that the company had not raised as much money as it needed.
After a key partnership with Marriott fell through, Sonder entered bankruptcy and wound down. In 2026, the bankruptcy trustee sold Sonder’s name, trademarks, and website domain to TravelAI. That site now serves as a curated guide to the sort of travel rental properties Sonder was once known for. Before the collapse, Davidson had built Sonder into a unicorn with $143 million in revenues. He remains the kind of founder Silicon Valley often values, even after the company’s failure.
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