Background and career
Joseph Gebbia Jr. (; born August 21, 1981) is an American designer and entrepreneur, and a co-founder of Airbnb. In 2025, he joined the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Gebbia was appointed by President Donald Trump as the first Chief Design Officer to lead the National Design Studio. Gebbia is also on the board of directors of Airbnb, but has not been involved in the operations of the company since 2022. In 2022, Gebbia joined the board of Tesla Inc. and bought a minority stake in the San Antonio Spurs basketball team. He also co-founded Samara, an accessory dwelling unit startup.
Gebbia was born August 21, 1981, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Eileen and Joe Gebbia, independent health food sales representatives. Gebbia is of Italian and Irish ancestry and has one sister, Kimberly. He grew up in Lawrenceville, Georgia and attended Brookwood High School in nearby Snellville. In 2005, Gebbia graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design and Industrial Design. Gebbia took supplementary business-related classes at Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) while attending RISD.
After graduating from RISD, Gebbia moved to San Francisco to work as a designer for Chronicle Books. He also founded Ecolect, a green-design website. In 2007, Brian Chesky, his classmate at RISD, moved in with him, and they both quit their jobs to start a company together. Gebbia came up with the idea of renting out airbeds in their apartment. They marketed the beds by creating a website called "AirBed & Breakfast.” In March 2009, the name of the company was shortened to Airbnb.com, and the site's content had expanded from air beds and shared spaces to properties including entire homes, apartments, and private rooms.
In May 2017, Gebbia launched Neighborhood, a modular designed office furniture business. The furniture was created for Bernhardt Design, a furniture company that has worked with emerging designers. Gebbia supported the newly formed Eames Institute, aimed at broadening the influence of Ray and Charles Eames through exhibitions from the Eames Collection. On December 10, 2020, Airbnb became a public company via an initial public offering, raising $3.5 billion. In January 2022, Gebbia acquired a minority ownership stake in the San Antonio Spurs, joining billionaire Michael Dell and San Francisco-based global investment firm Sixth Street Partners as fellow investors. In July 2022, Gebbia stepped down from his full-time operating role at Airbnb, while remaining on the board of directors in an advisory role. In September 2022, Gebbia was appointed by Tesla, Inc. to its board of directors. Samara, formerly a research and development unit of Airbnb established in 2016, became an independent accessory dwelling unit (ADU) startup in 2022. Gebbia announced the launch of its first product in November 2022, a net-zero tiny house called Backyard.
Stark Bank, a corporate bank focusing on financial technology Vimcal, a calendar mobile app A minority ownership stake in the San Antonio Spurs
In 2020, Gebbia was an executive producer on the documentary film Universe, which follows jazz trumpeter Wallace Roney, a protégé of Miles Davis, as he convenes an orchestra to perform a rediscovered orchestral jazz suite by Wayne Shorter—written in 1966 for Miles Davis but never before performed. The film premiered weeks after Roney died from complications of COVID-19, making it one of the first films portraying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gebbia also executive produced a documentary titled We Dare to Dream, in partnership with XTR, following the 29-athlete Refugee Olympic Team at the Olympics before, during and after the 2020 Summer Olympics.
