Airbnb may have found its stride, and in a period of rapid change it pays to back the companies that are executing. On the Q2 call, CEO Brian Chesky said the company is innovating faster than it ever has. x.com 

Airbnb is heading toward becoming an AI-native travel platform with inventory nobody else has. Q2 gross booking value rose 16% year over year, with $27.2 billion of bookings, as experiences and services attach to the core and hotels gain traction. As shoppers move to AI-native search, Airbnb's largely non-commodity inventory positions it well, and adding commoditized hotels and car rentals lets it connect trips end to end. x.com  x.com 

Airbnb's turn to American Express suggests it is about to abuse shareholders. American Express is the new Costco, where dying brands go to rot. x.com  x.com 

Airbnb is finally getting respect for one of the largest moats around. It is founder-led and innovating, buys back 2-3% of its float a year with a very high free-cash-flow margin, and shows consistent growth across all key and emerging markets. x.com 

Uber is one of the most interesting opportunities in the market, down 31% from its highs while printing more cash. The market treats it as a low-margin business that autonomous driving could disrupt, missing its real moat: distribution. A network of consumers, drivers and merchants is very hard to replicate and lets it add verticals without paying acquisition costs again. Uber also owns about 13% of Grab, down 85% and building financial services on the same model. x.com 

Airbnb is losing ground to hotels and other aggregators that compete without hidden fees. Over five years, Marriott returned 173% and Hilton 163% versus 18% for Airbnb, per @Fiscal_ai. x.com 

Uber's rising operating margins make the market's apparent dismissal of it look misplaced. Its trailing operating margin climbed from -13% in March 2022 to 12% in June 2026, continuing the earlier case that improving profitability is underappreciated. x.com 

Airbnb's long underperformance is ending: it was too expensive at its IPO and has had to work through and digest those expectations, which is about to change. x.com 

Airbnb is a value trap. The stock has been flat for five years, and signs of the promised revenue acceleration from new products are limited. Now CEO Brian Chesky is starting a new AI lab to develop models while remaining CEO, per @negligible_cap, a side project that shareholders should find annoying. x.com  x.com 

Autonomy could expand the ride market tenfold, giving Uber a long growth runway if it does. That is the true 10x opportunity, like ridesharing's expansion of the taxi market. Uber will be a $1 trillion company by 2035. Improved autonomous-vehicle margins are possible but uncertain. x.com  x.com  x.com