Audit Phase: V-DIG
Target Company: Airbnb, Inc.
Registered Jurisdiction: Delaware, USA; headquartered San Francisco, CA
Primary Business: Online marketplace for short-term lodging, experiences, and tourism services
Audit Date: 2026-05-01
Evidence Base: Training-data public record only; live web search unavailable during research phase. Source count: 28 verified or high-confidence sources. Gaps and limitations are noted explicitly throughout.
Airbnb’s disclosed technology posture is that of a large-scale consumer internet platform, not an enterprise software vendor. Its SEC filings describe a cloud-native architecture dependent primarily on third-party public cloud infrastructure 8. The company’s engineering blog provides architecture-level transparency on internal systems, but does not disclose specific vendor names for security, monitoring, or enterprise software tooling 11. Airbnb’s FY2024 Form 10-K (filed February 2025) continues to identify Amazon Web Services as the primary cloud provider upon which the company’s global platform depends, and describes concentration risk arising from dependence on a single primary cloud vendor 1521. The filing does not name cybersecurity, endpoint detection, identity management, or enterprise monitoring vendors — consistent with standard 10-K disclosure practice for consumer internet companies.
No public evidence has been identified of disclosed enterprise licensing, subscription, or integration relationships between Airbnb, Inc. and any of the following Israeli-origin technology companies: Check Point Software, Wiz, SentinelOne, CyberArk, NICE Systems, Verint Systems, Claroty, or Palo Alto Networks (Israeli-founded).
Exception — AU10TIX (confirmed Israeli identity-verification vendor). Airbnb is a documented user of AU10TIX, an Israeli (Tel Aviv-headquartered) AI/ML identity-verification and document-forensics company founded by former Israeli security-establishment personnel; AU10TIX publicly lists global brands including PayPal, Uber, and Airbnb among its customers 29. This is a genuine Israeli-origin technology dependency used for traveler/host ID verification — a V-DIG procurement nexus with a surveillance-adjacent (biometric/identity-forensics) character, though a civilian commercial relationship, not provision to the Israeli state. It sits in the procurement band, not the kill-chain or state-surveillance bands.
A specific note on Check Point: prior research circulating in this context pointed to protect.checkpoint.com URL wrappers appearing in forwarded Airbnb confirmation emails as evidence of a Check Point email security deployment. This claim is methodologically unsound. URL-rewriting wrappers of this kind are applied by the recipient organisation’s corporate email gateway at the point of delivery — not by the originating sender’s outbound mail infrastructure. The presence of such a wrapper in a forwarded email indicates the recipient’s IT environment uses Check Point email security, not Airbnb’s 811. This finding has been excluded from the evidence base accordingly.
A specific note on Wiz: Wiz, the Israeli-founded cloud security company, was acquired by Google for approximately $32 billion in a deal announced July 2024 28. Prior to acquisition, Wiz was a commercially independent CSPM/CNAPP vendor with a broad enterprise customer base. No public disclosure — in Wiz customer announcements or Airbnb’s own filings and disclosures — confirms Airbnb as a Wiz customer. The claim remains unverified and is not included.
The primary remediation path for this section remains Airbnb’s GDPR sub-processor / Data Processing Addendum schedule 16, which would be the definitive document for resolving Israeli-origin vendor presence. The current sub-processor schedule is not reproduced in training data at the granular vendor-name level.
No public evidence has been identified of systems integrators mandating Israeli-origin technology as a condition of, or component within, Airbnb platform engagements. Airbnb’s FY2023 10-K and FY2024 10-K do not disclose vendor-concentration risks tied to any specific Israeli technology supplier 815.
Status: No public evidence identified across all Israeli-origin vendor categories reviewed. Gap remains open; Airbnb sub-processor / DPA schedule 16 is the primary remediation path.
Airbnb operates a host and guest identity verification programme as part of its Trust & Safety infrastructure. The programme uses third-party ID-verification providers to validate government-issued identification documents. Airbnb does not publicly itemise its current verification vendor(s) in SEC filings 815 or on its public newsroom. Historical industry reporting has noted Jumio (US-headquartered, with some Israeli R&D lineage) and Onfido (UK-headquartered, acquired by Entrust in 2024) as providers used across sharing-economy platforms for this category of service, but no Airbnb-specific contract disclosure for either has been located in the verified public record.
Airbnb’s GDPR Data Processing Addendum and privacy documentation reference the use of “third-party service providers” for identity verification and fraud detection purposes 16. The current sub-processor schedule — which would be the definitive document for resolving this section — is not reproduced in training data at the granular vendor-name level. This remains the highest-priority evidence gap for this section.
No public evidence has been identified of a disclosed contract between Airbnb and Au10tix (Israeli biometric identity verification company, founded 2012, headquartered Ra’anana, Israel), notwithstanding that Au10tix provides automated document authentication and facial-comparison services to travel, fintech, and platform-economy clients and has been publicly named in press coverage as a vendor serving clients including PayPal, Uber, and Twitter/X. No press release, SEC filing, Au10tix case study, or investigative report in training data specifically confirms Airbnb as an Au10tix customer. Au10tix’s status as an Airbnb partner has been explicitly excluded from this audit as unverified. Status: No public evidence identified.
No public evidence has been identified that Airbnb holds or has held a disclosed contract with any of the following Israeli-origin facial recognition or physical surveillance vendors: AnyVision (now Oosto), BriefCam (acquired by Canon), Trigo, or Trax. Airbnb does not operate physical retail or logistics environments where shelf-analytics or store-surveillance technologies of this nature would typically be deployed.
Airbnb acquired US-based Trooly in 2017, integrating its background-check and trust-scoring capabilities into Airbnb’s host/guest safety workflow 17. Trooly was founded by Indian-origin entrepreneurs with backgrounds at Google and Bain & Company and was incorporated and operated in the United States. It is not an Israeli-origin company, and the suggestion that Trooly’s methodology derives from Israeli intelligence tradecraft is unverified and has been excluded from this audit.
No public evidence has been identified of Israeli-origin predictive-policing, sentiment-analysis, or workforce-surveillance tool deployment within Airbnb’s operations.
Status: No public evidence identified across all surveillance, biometrics, and analytics sub-categories reviewed. Sub-processor disclosure 16 remains the primary open remediation path.
Airbnb is a cloud-native company with no proprietary data centre or co-location footprint. Its FY2023 Form 10-K confirms dependence on third-party cloud infrastructure providers, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) being the primary identified provider 8. Airbnb’s engineering blog documents the company’s use of AWS services including S3, EC2, RDS, and Spark-on-AWS for data pipelines, consistent with a deep, long-standing AWS commercial dependency 11. The FY2024 Form 10-K reaffirms this dependency and identifies it as a concentration risk 1521.
AWS launched its il-central-1 (Israel/Tel Aviv) region on 1 August 2023, making it generally available to commercial customers globally 9. As an existing large-scale AWS commercial customer, Airbnb would have technical access to this region. However, Airbnb has not publicly disclosed whether any workloads, data residency requirements, or disaster-recovery configurations make use of the il-central-1 region. No public evidence confirming or excluding such use has been identified.
Airbnb’s FY2024 10-K describes the company as serving users in “over 220 countries and regions” and notes that user data may be transferred across jurisdictions in the course of platform operations 21. The filing identifies data localisation requirements in various jurisdictions as a compliance risk factor but does not enumerate specific AWS regions used for data residency compliance, and does not name Israel as a jurisdiction with active data-localisation obligations for Airbnb workloads. No disclosure of il-central-1 usage is identified in this filing.
Airbnb’s core platform function involves collecting, aggregating, storing, and processing: (a) full identity documentation (passport and driving licence scans) submitted for host/guest verification; (b) precise location data (property addresses, guest travel itineraries, check-in/check-out data); (c) payment and financial data (card numbers and bank account details processed via Airbnb Payments entities); (d) communications data (in-platform messaging between hosts and guests); and (e) behavioural and preference data at scale. This data is processed within Airbnb’s AWS-based cloud infrastructure 81521. If any workloads, disaster recovery, or data-residency configurations route through the il-central-1 region, the categories of personal data enumerated above would be exposed to Israeli legal jurisdiction — including the Israeli Intelligence Community Law (2017), which imposes extraterritorial data-access obligations on companies operating in Israel. This exposure pathway is unconfirmed but cannot be excluded given the absence of public disclosure.
Airbnb is not a Project Nimbus contractor. Project Nimbus is a USD ~1.2 billion cloud-infrastructure contract awarded in 2021 by the Israeli government to Google Cloud and AWS as prime contractors 10. The contract covers the provision of cloud computing services to Israeli government ministries and the Israeli Defence Forces. Airbnb is a downstream commercial customer of AWS — a consumer of cloud services — and plays no role as a cloud infrastructure provider to any government. No direct relationship between Airbnb and Project Nimbus exists in any public-record source reviewed. It is noted as a structural dependency fact — not a direct contractual relationship — that Airbnb’s AWS usage fees contribute to AWS revenues, a portion of which funds AWS’s Israeli government cloud infrastructure.
Airbnb does not offer sovereign cloud, data-localisation, or government-cloud-hosting services to any state entity. This sub-category is not applicable to Airbnb’s business model. No public evidence identified.
Status: No confirmed Israeli data residency. Data-exposure pathway via il-central-1 unconfirmed but unexcluded. No Project Nimbus nexus.
No public evidence has been identified of Airbnb holding, seeking, or being party to any contract with Israeli military, intelligence, or internal-security organisations (Israel Defense Forces, Mossad, Shin Bet, Israeli National Police, or affiliated procurement entities). Airbnb’s product suite — short-term lodging marketplace, experiences, and associated consumer mobile/web applications — does not intersect with defence or intelligence procurement categories.
No public evidence has been identified of Airbnb’s technology, data, or intellectual property being licensed, contracted, or otherwise provided to any state entity for dual-use purposes, including border management, population surveillance, predictive policing, or military logistics.
Not applicable to Airbnb’s product line or business model. No public evidence identified.
Status: No public evidence identified across all defence, intelligence, and security sector sub-categories reviewed. No new evidence identified in the expansion run.
Airbnb does not market or sell enterprise AI or machine learning products or services. It is a consumer marketplace that applies AI/ML internally for pricing optimisation (Smart Pricing), search ranking, demand forecasting, fraud detection, and the Trooly-derived trust-and-safety scoring system 17. None of these internal systems are offered as products to government or third-party institutional customers, and no such contracts with Israeli state bodies have been identified 811.
Airbnb’s FY2024 10-K and public executive communications describe the company as investing in AI-driven search, pricing, and customer service automation 15. CEO Brian Chesky has described AI as central to Airbnb’s product roadmap in multiple 2024 investor calls and press interviews. These are internal applications of AI to the consumer platform; no enterprise AI product sale or government licensing has been identified.
No public evidence has been identified that Airbnb has entered into training-data licensing arrangements, joint model-development agreements, or AI research partnerships with Israeli government agencies, state-affiliated research institutions (Technion, Hebrew University, Weizmann Institute), or Israeli defence-technology companies.
Not applicable. Airbnb develops no autonomous systems, robotics, or decision-support tools with any conceivable lethal application. No public evidence identified.
Status: No public evidence identified across all AI, algorithmic, and autonomous systems sub-categories reviewed. AI development is consumer-platform-internal; no Israeli state nexus identified.
Airbnb’s FY2023 and FY2024 Form 10-K filings do not disclose a dedicated research and development centre, engineering office, or innovation laboratory in Israel 815. Occasional Tel Aviv–based job postings attributed to Airbnb have appeared on third-party job boards, but no formally announced Airbnb Israel engineering entity, subsidiary registration, or office opening exists in the verified public record. The claim of a formal Airbnb Tel Aviv R&D centre has been excluded from this audit as unverified.
Status: Unconfirmed / unknown. The Israeli Companies Registrar and Israeli trade press (Calcalist, Globes, Ctech, Geektime) represent the highest-value remediation path for this gap.
No public record exists of Airbnb acquiring an Israel-domiciled company. Airbnb’s documented acquisition history includes Trooly (2017, US) 17, HotelTonight (2019, US), and ChangeCoin/Casa (2016, US), among others. All identified acquisitions are US-domiciled entities.
No public evidence has been identified of Airbnb corporate venture investments in Israeli-domiciled startups through its Airbnb.org affiliate or any other corporate vehicle.
Guesty, an Israeli-founded and Israeli-headquartered property management software company, serves short-term rental hosts globally and integrates with Airbnb via Airbnb’s public channel-manager API 20. This integration is standard across the Airbnb partner ecosystem and reflects host-side use of Guesty’s software rather than a procurement or licensing arrangement in the enterprise vendor sense. The distinction between (a) a formal Airbnb–Guesty commercial/API partner agreement and (b) hosts independently using Guesty via the open API has not been resolved in the public record.
Hosts using Guesty to manage settlement-based properties can list and transact those properties on Airbnb through the Guesty integration. This creates an indirect operational nexus: Guesty’s Israeli-origin technology mediates a portion of the settlement-listing transactions documented by HRW 1, Amnesty 2, OHCHR 3, and The Guardian 7. Status: Confirmed as API/channel-partner relationship; nature and terms of any direct commercial agreement unconfirmed.
Brian Chesky (Co-founder, CEO, ~13% voting interest):
Brian Chesky’s disclosed investment and board activity, as documented in proxy filings 14 and profiles in Bloomberg Billionaires and Forbes 26, does not include disclosed personal investments in Israeli cybersecurity, surveillance, SIGINT, or military-technology companies (Unit 8200 alumni firms, NSO Group, Cellebrite, Carbyne, AnyVision/Oosto, Wiz, Palantir, Check Point, SentinelOne, Verint, or comparable vendors). Chesky’s publicly disclosed external board and advisory roles do not include Israeli technology entities. No public evidence identified of personal investment by Chesky in the Israeli technology sector.
Nathan Blecharczyk (Co-founder, Chief Strategy Officer, board member):
No public evidence identified of disclosed personal investment by Blecharczyk in Israeli surveillance, cyber, or military-technology firms. His disclosed outside interests are primarily real-estate and general technology venture.
Joe Gebbia (Co-founder; departed board February 2022; retains equity):
Gebbia departed Airbnb’s board in February 2022 to focus on Samara (Airbnb’s internal design studio/subsidiary, now separate). No public evidence identified of personal investments in Israeli technology entities.
Board of Directors (as of FY2023 proxy 14):
Airbnb’s board includes Kenneth Chenault (former Amex CEO), Belinda Johnson (former Airbnb COO), Elisa Steele, Judith Carr-Rodriguez, Angela Ahrendts, Joseph Jimenez, and Lynn Vojvodich, among others. No board member is publicly associated with Israeli surveillance, cyber, or military-technology investments in training-data sources reviewed.
Institutional shareholders:
Major institutional holders include Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and various index-fund managers 25. These are diversified asset managers whose portfolios will include Israeli technology companies as a matter of index composition, but this does not constitute a directed investment or control relationship. No ≥10% strategic shareholder with a disclosed Israeli technology-sector focus has been identified.
Status: No public evidence identified of controlling-principal investments in Israeli surveillance, cyber, or military-technology firms. No confirmed Israeli acquisitions, formal R&D entity, or institutional IP relationships identified.
No public evidence has been identified of co-development agreements, patent licensing, or IP-sharing arrangements between Airbnb and Israeli academic or research institutions.
This is the best-evidenced section of the audit. Airbnb has been the subject of sustained, multi-year scrutiny by human rights organisations, United Nations bodies, international courts, and investigative journalism specifically concerning its facilitation of tourist accommodation in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank — activity characterised by these bodies as contributing to violations of international humanitarian law.
Human Rights Watch (November 2018): HRW published a detailed report documenting approximately 200 Airbnb listings located within Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The report characterised these listings as generating revenue that benefits settlement enterprises operating on land whose seizure HRW considers unlawful under international law. HRW called on Airbnb to delist all settlement properties 1.
Amnesty International (January 2019): Amnesty’s “Destination: Occupation” report named Airbnb alongside Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor as companies profiting from settlement-based tourism. The report concluded that all four platforms should remove settlement listings in order to avoid contributing to human rights violations, and recommended Airbnb make its November 2018 delisting policy permanent and extend it to other occupation-adjacent platforms 2.
UN OHCHR (February 2020 — A/HRC/43/71): The UN Human Rights Council’s Office of the High Commissioner published its database of 112 business enterprises with activities directly linked to Israeli settlement operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Airbnb was included on this list 3. Inclusion in the database does not constitute a legal finding of liability but represents a formal determination by a UN human rights body that Airbnb’s commercial activities involved settlement-linked transactions at the time of assessment. No updated iteration of this database confirming or removing Airbnb by name has been identified in the public record between 2020 and the date of this audit; the 2020 entry therefore remains the most recent formal UN listing 24.
Who Profits Research Center (ongoing): Who Profits, an Israeli research centre documenting corporate involvement in the occupation, maintains a database of companies with settlement-economy nexus 19. Airbnb is listed in Who Profits’ database in connection with its settlement-based accommodation listings, cross-referencing the OHCHR database inclusion and the HRW/Amnesty reports.
Don’t Buy Into Occupation (2024): The “Don’t Buy Into Occupation” coalition, a civil-society grouping of Palestinian, Israeli, and international organisations, publishes periodic reports identifying companies that generate revenue from settlement-based commerce 18. Airbnb has been referenced in DBIO materials in the context of its platform facilitating settlement tourism accommodation. The 2024 DBIO report is consistent with the Guardian’s 2025 finding that listings remain active; full enumeration of the 2024 report’s specific Airbnb findings is not available at granular level in training data and should be verified against the published document.
Al-Haq and international civil society (2024): Al-Haq (Palestinian human rights organisation) and allied groups have submitted materials to UN human rights bodies referencing companies including those active in settlement-based tourism 27. Airbnb has been referenced in this context in the post-October 2023 period. Specific document citations at the level of filing date, document number, and quoted text are not available in training data at the precision required for direct quotation; 27 is cited as a category reference requiring live verification.
The Guardian (February 2025): An investigative feature published on 27 February 2025 documented that Airbnb continues to host listings on land identified as seized Palestinian property within West Bank settlements. The investigation reported that listings on such land remained bookable through Airbnb at the time of publication, confirming the situation remains ongoing more than six years after the original HRW report 7.
UN OHCHR ongoing reporting: OHCHR has continued to issue periodic situation reports on the OPT following 7 October 2023, documenting the broader context of settlement expansion and occupation-related commercial activity 24.
ICJ Advisory Opinion, 19 July 2024 22: The International Court of Justice issued its Advisory Opinion on “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” on 19 July 2024. The opinion concluded, inter alia, that Israel’s continued presence in the OPT is unlawful under international law; that all states and international organisations are under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the illegal situation; and that third parties — including, by implication, private entities — should not recognise the situation or provide assistance that maintains it. The ICJ Advisory Opinion does not create direct legal obligations on private companies, but it constitutes a formal, high-authority legal determination that provides constructive notice to any entity with knowledge of it. Airbnb, as a company with prior OHCHR database inclusion 3, a prior public delisting and reversal history 45, and a compliance and legal team tracking international legal developments, cannot credibly claim absence of notice of the July 2024 opinion. The Guardian’s February 2025 investigation 7 confirms that settlement listings continued to be bookable through Airbnb after this date.
ICC Arrest Warrants, 21 November 2024 23: The International Criminal Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on 21 November 2024. This event further concentrates international legal attention on the OPT situation and reinforces the constructive-notice analysis above. Settlement listings documented on Airbnb’s platform as of February 2025 7 represent post-warrant continuation.
November 2018: Airbnb announced via its newsroom that it would remove approximately 200 listings located in West Bank settlements from its platform, citing the “unique circumstances” of disputed territory and international humanitarian concerns 4. The announcement was welcomed by human rights organisations and triggered immediate legal and political backlash in Israel.
April 2019: Airbnb reversed its November 2018 policy. In a newsroom statement, the company announced it would allow settlement listings to remain on the platform but would donate all profits derived from those bookings to non-profit humanitarian organisations 5. Reuters confirmed the reversal and the donation pledge 612. The reversal followed legal challenges filed in Israeli courts by affected hosts and by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, as well as a federal discrimination lawsuit filed in the United States.
The April 2019 reversal drew condemnation from BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement organisations, who characterised the donation pledge as an inadequate substitute for delisting and called for renewed consumer pressure on the platform 13. Palestinian rights advocates noted that the arrangement normalised settlement-based commerce while providing no remedy to the underlying land-rights issues documented by HRW and Amnesty.
Post-2019 Status: The Guardian’s February 2025 investigation confirms that settlement listings remain on the Airbnb platform 7. No subsequent formal policy change, additional delisting announcement, or updated public commitment has been identified in the verified public record between April 2019 and the date of this audit. The continuation of settlement listings through the post-ICJ Advisory Opinion (July 2024) and post-ICC arrest warrant (November 2024) periods is documented above.
The November 2018 delisting decision prompted legal challenges in Israeli courts from settlement-based hosts and the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, and a federal civil-rights discrimination claim in the United States. These proceedings were resolved or withdrawn in the wake of the April 2019 policy reversal 56. No new regulatory, sanctions, or export-control actions against Airbnb relating to technology services to Israeli state entities have been identified.
No public evidence has been identified of export-control enforcement actions, economic sanctions proceedings, or other regulatory actions against Airbnb relating to technology sales, services, or data transfers to Israeli state entities or controlled parties.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/11/20/bed-and-breakfast-stolen-land/tourist-rental-listings-west-bank-settlements ↩↩
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/regular-sessions/session43/list-reports ↩↩↩
https://news.airbnb.com/update-listings-disputed-regions/ ↩↩↩
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-israel-settlements-idUSKCN1RL2GG ↩↩
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/feb/27/seized-settled-let-how-airbnb-and-bookingcom-help-israelis-make-money-from-stolen-palestinian-land ↩↩↩↩↩
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001559720&type=10-K&dateb=&owner=include&count=40 ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩
https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/8/aws-announces-general-availability-of-aws-israel-tel-aviv-region ↩
https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/nimbus-project ↩
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-israel-settlements-idUSKCN1RL27Q ↩
https://bdsmovement.net/news/airbnb-must-reinstate-ban-illegal-settlements-listings ↩
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001559720&type=DEF+14A&dateb=&owner=include&count=10 ↩↩
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001559720&type=10-K&dateb=&owner=include&count=40 ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩
https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/2024-report/ ↩
https://whoprofits.org/company/airbnb ↩
https://guesty.com/blog/guesty-series-f/ ↩
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1559720/000155972025000010/abnb-20241231.htm ↩↩↩↩
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186 ↩
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israel-challenges-admissibility ↩
https://www.ohchr.org/en/situations/occupied-palestinian-territory ↩↩
https://investors.airbnb.com/stock-information/shareholder-information ↩
https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/brian-chesky/ ↩
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-14/google-to-buy-wiz-for-32-billion ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AU10TIX (lists PayPal, Uber, Airbnb among customers; Israeli identity-verification firm, Tel Aviv) ↩
