Expedia Group is parting ways with at least eight vice presidents and senior vice presidents in a major reorganization designed to reorient its product and technology groups around AI.
In an internal memo Tuesday, obtained by GeekWire, the Seattle-based online travel giant’s top product and technology leaders said “AI has radically changed what’s possible” over the past year, and that “work that once took weeks increasingly happens in hours.”
The company must “fundamentally change how we work, how we’re organized, and the technology we build,” wrote Chief Product Officer Shilpa Ranganathan and Chief Technology Officer Ramana Thumu in the memo (full text below).
They said the company is moving to “small end-to-end squads with clear ownership” and making AI and machine learning “part of every mission.”
This comes amid the online travel industry’s broader reckoning with the implications of artificial intelligence. AI agents are emerging as a new interface for travel, with the potential to relegate booking platforms to inventory sources behind the scenes unless they keep pace.
Expedia confirmed the departures in response to an inquiry from GeekWire.
“We’re evolving our Product and Technology organization to better align engineering and product teams with the brands and businesses they support,” an Expedia Group spokesperson said via email. “By bringing teams closer to the work and decisions, we can move faster and deliver more impactful experiences for travelers and partners.”
The spokesperson described the impact as “limited,” not saying how many roles were cut. “The majority of the changes involved employees moving to different teams or changes in reporting lines to better align talent and resources with business priorities,” the spokesperson said.
Most of the changes are to leadership scope and reporting lines, according to the memo, but “in a small number of cases, we made the tough decision to eliminate some roles.”
Reorg details: The most senior departure is Sachin Singh, SVP of book-to-trip technology, a former Amazon exec who joined Expedia in 2022 and served on the CTO leadership team. The memo credits him with advancing priorities “across checkout, payments, fraud prevention, servicing, and AI.”
Singh’s portfolio is being broken up. According to his LinkedIn profile, he led checkout, payments, fraud and risk, and post-booking self-service. The memo moves fraud and risk under Chief Information Security Officer Hilik Kotler, self-service under Ryan O’Neill, and payments product, technology and operations under Reena Patil and Debashis Saha.
Seven other leaders are also leaving, according to the memo: Sara Beckmann, Ian Butcher, Matt Esler, Amitabh Ghosh, Emil Riccardi, Fiona Stevenson and Shao Xie. Their LinkedIn profiles list them as vice presidents in product and technology roles including pricing, lodging, data platform, and travel platform and fraud.
The memo also lists promotions. Saha was elevated to senior vice president of travel foundations. Four leaders were promoted to vice president: Rajat Arora, Ryan Hillman, Ashwita Kaur and Ambrish Srivastava. All four were senior directors, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Data, AI and agentic platforms all move under Xavier Amatriain, the former Google AI executive Expedia named as its first chief AI and data officer in December.
Rick Fast, senior vice president of platform engineering, becomes chief architect.
A third disruption for travel: In a May interview marking the company’s 30th anniversary, Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin described artificial intelligence as the third major technology disruption in Expedia’s history, after the internet and mobile. She said the AI era was “only starting to unfold.”
The online travel industry is facing the prospect that AI assistants could do to Expedia and Booking.com what those companies once did to traditional travel agents — inserting themselves between travelers and suppliers, and pushing the incumbents into the background. Marriott’s CEO has said AI booking agents will hurt online travel agencies more than they will hotels.
Expedia has been embedding itself in the new platforms as a hedge. It was a launch partner when OpenAI opened ChatGPT to outside apps, and began buying ads inside ChatGPT this year.
So far the disruption has moved slower than feared. When OpenAI pulled its Instant Checkout button from ChatGPT’s main interface in March and stepped back from processing travel transactions directly, shares of Expedia and Booking Holdings jumped significantly.
Expedia Group’s brands include Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo, along with Orbitz, Travelocity, ebookers and Wotif, plus its majority-owned hotel metasearch subsidiary, trivago.
The company ended 2025 with about 16,000 employees across nearly 50 countries, according to its most recent annual report, and said “approximately one half of our people work in technology roles” — putting the organization at the center of Tuesday’s memo at roughly 8,000 people.
Employment peaked above 25,000 in 2019, fell to 14,800 during the pandemic, and rebounded to 17,100 by the end of 2023, before a series of restructurings and layoffs in recent years.
Here’s the full text of the memo:
Hi Product and Technology teams,
We’re making some organizational changes to bring our teams closer together.
Our mission is to grow our business and build a platform that propels both our consumer and B2B businesses forward. To do this, we need to move a lot faster, and, over the past year, AI has radically changed what’s possible. Work that once took weeks increasingly happens in hours. To fully realize that opportunity, we must fundamentally change how we work, how we’re organized, and the technology we build. As we work differently, we will move faster from idea to outcome, organize into small end-to-end squads with clear ownership, make AI and Machine Learning part of every mission, and build products that scale.
Several teams have been piloting a different way of working that removes the usual constraints and provides squads and smaller cross-functional teams clear ownership. Our new structure considers what these teams have learned, that:
- A lot of speed blockers are structural.
- Decisions and accountability work best when teams are close to the work and have greater autonomy.
- When used well, AI bridges gaps and scales knowledge in real-time.
Going forward, you should expect less time coordinating and waiting, and more time working together to build great experiences for travelers and partners.
What this means for you
Most changes are to leadership scope and reporting lines, bringing teams closer and simplifying our organization. In a small number of cases, we made the tough decision to eliminate some roles. Anyone experiencing a change directly has been informed.
Detailed placemats are posted on Basecamp, but some of the key changes are:
- Dedicated Technology teams will be moved under each Brand Product leader: CJ Allen, Ritcha Ranjan and Eric Moore.
- The Product & Technology team for Supply will be consolidated under Jonathan Holland.
- The Product & Technology team for Fraud & Risk will be consolidated under Hilik Kotler.
- Rick Fast is becoming Chief Architect.
- Data, AI, and Agentic platforms are consolidated under Xavi Amatriain.
- Product & Technology team for Self Service will be consolidated under Ryan O’Neill.
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is moving from Marketing into Product & Technology under Reena Patil and Debashis Saha, respectively.
- Payments Product, Tech & Ops will also be moving under Reena Patil and Debashis Saha, respectively.
- Strategic Payment Partnerships is moving to Finance.
Experience Design under Rachel Been has made some adjustments to enable tighter alignment with our Product and Technology teams.
With this, Sachin Singh will be leaving Expedia Group. During his time on the CTO Leadership Team, we advanced key priorities across checkout, payments, fraud prevention, servicing, and AI that have had a real impact for travelers and the business.
We also want to recognize Sara Beckmann, Ian Butcher, Matt Esler, Amitabh Ghosh, Emil Riccardi, Fiona Stevenson, and Shao Xie, who will be leaving Expedia Group, and thank them for their leadership and contributions.
Additionally, Debashis Saha has been promoted to SVP, Travel Foundations and the following leaders have been promoted to Vice President: Rajat Arora, Ryan Hillman, Ashwita Kaur and Ambrish Srivastava.
Next Steps
Your leaders will be reaching out and hosting team meetings soon to walk through more context, org charts, and questions. In the meantime, head to Basecamp for more, including domain placemats, team charters, and more details.
This new structure is one step. The real work is in how we operate within it. It’s a new chapter for our teams as we deepen the partnership between Product and Technology and go after our big bets with speed and focus. We’re excited about what’s ahead, and we hope you will be too as you learn more about what this means for your day-to-day,
Thank you,
Shilpa & Ramana