OpenAI acquires Odessia in travel AI push
OpenAI has acquired Odessia, the AI travel startup founded by Sonder’s Francis Davidson, while its travel service is being shut down.
OpenAI has acquired Odessia, an AI travel startup founded by Sonder co-founder Francis Davidson. Odessia’s official website confirms the acquisition and says its travel service is no longer available, although support remains open for existing bookings and travel plans.1
The deal puts a quiet end to Odessia as a standalone consumer service. The company launched its travel-planning product roughly five months ago, offering an AI-led way to organise trips. Its website now directs customers with existing plans to support rather than inviting new users to sign up.1
What happened to Odessia
TechCrunch reports that Davidson has joined OpenAI to work on the future of travel, and that OpenAI confirmed his hire. The report describes the transaction as an acquisition, although neither the companies’ public notice nor the reporting gives a purchase price.2
Odessia had raised a $6 million pre-seed round led by Sequoia, according to TechCrunch. The startup said its early adopters had used the service to plan millions of dollars’ worth of travel. Those figures describe the scale of the early experiment, not a new OpenAI travel product.2
The official notice is deliberately narrow. It confirms the acquisition and the service shutdown, but does not announce an OpenAI travel app, a new ChatGPT feature or a timetable for bringing Odessia’s technology into another product.1
That leaves the most immediate change clear: Odessia’s existing service is closed to new use, while people with bookings or saved travel plans can still contact the company for help. Any future travel offering from OpenAI remains unannounced.12
Our opinion
This looks more significant as a talent-and-product acquisition than as a consumer launch. OpenAI gains a founder with experience building travel software, but readers should not mistake the shutdown of Odessia for the arrival of an OpenAI travel service. Until OpenAI publishes a product announcement, the defensible takeaway is simply that the company has acquired the startup and hired its founder.
The choice to use a GPS image is illustrative rather than a depiction of Odessia’s product. Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels.4