The next AI winners may look nothing like Nvidia (NVDA) or Micron (MU). The first phase of the trade rewarded companies building the AI infrastructure, from chips to data centers. As the AI rally broadens, the next hunting ground may be businesses using those tools to cut costs, lift sales, or improve productivity.
The travel industry offers a good case study. Travel stocks took off broadly from their May lows, with airlines leading the first leg. Then the leadership changed.
Airbnb (ABNB), Booking Holdings (BKNG), and Expedia (EXPE) kept climbing into August while hotels stalled and airlines and cruises gave back part of their early surge. The three booking platforms are up nearly 40% at the median since May 19. The market move is a good reason to look more closely at what is changing inside these companies.
AI is starting to show up in measurable business results, not just product demos. There is no way to pin the stock-performance gap on AI alone. But Airbnb and Booking are already putting numbers around the payoff.
At Airbnb, nearly 45% of customer issues that begin with its AI assistant are resolved without a human, while customer support cost per booking has fallen roughly 16% from a year ago, with AI helping drive the improvement. "AI is the best thing that ever happened to Airbnb," CEO Brian Chesky told Yahoo Finance. Booking is seeing a similar payoff.
Customer service cost per booking is falling at a double-digit rate, and management says its AI investments are already producing a positive return. Yet referrals from AI chatbots remain a tiny share of room nights. In other words, the early payoff is happening inside the businesses themselves through customer service, search, personalization, and productivity.
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