This month, officially marked the 20th anniversary of the real estate website’s launch. One executive who has been a senior leader from the beginning is David Beitel, who has served as CTO throughout Zillow’s existence.
“I’ve really only had two jobs in my entire career,” says Beitel. He initially joined as a software design engineer in the 1990s and was placed in a travel product division that would later become the travel technology giant . That’s where he first met two future Zillow co-founders, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frank.
Over the past two decades, Beitel’s main goal as CTO has been to incorporate technology into all stages of the home buying process, making it easier for shoppers to search for a home, find an agent, schedule tours, make a successful offer, and complete a transaction. But he has also been highly focused on internal use cases and says there isn’t a single part of the business where artificial intelligence isn’t being considered as a tool to improve workflows.
Zillow’s engineers have been using AI coding assistant tools like Cursor and Claude for over two years. Beitel says the key is that Zillow constantly tests these AI coding tools and models, making continuous adjustments to ensure the team is using the best technology for the desired result. Zillow measures productivity, as well as the quality of the work these AI coding assistants produce. Overall, “the tools are getting very good,” says Beitel. “The models are improving every month.”
Throughout the broader enterprise, every employee has access to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Zillow also works closely with enterprise search and AI applications startup Glean, which reached in annual recurring revenue in December. Glean has made it easier for Zillow employees to explore generative AI in a protected environment. IT has set up the appropriate safeguards to ensure workers can only access data they have permission to. Using Glean, Zillow’s employees have already created over 4,600 AI agents.
Beitel says employees explore AI at three distinct levels. The basic level is using AI to find information, then automation is one level up. At the highest level, the most complex cases involve significant workflow changes that would speed up the development of a new product or uncover a new pricing strategy or competitive analysis research that hasn’t been explored using AI yet. Now, a few years into the generative AI journey, Beitel says Zillow’s workforce is expected to be at that third level of adoption.
“Don’t just think of AI as an afterthought,” says Beitel. “But consider how I can use AI from the start to make the tasks I’m doing faster, more efficient, more effective, and easier to complete?”
And while Zillow’s business has been booming, with revenue totaling $2.6 billion in in 2025, up 16% year over year, the broader housing market has been quite volatile. Last year, sales of previously owned homes reached their , as home buyers face mortgage rates that are double pandemic-era levels, high prices, and low inventory.
“If you’re a first-time home buyer, it’s intimidating, and it’s a very important purchase – usually one of the biggest you’ll make in your life,” says Beitel. “So it’s natural that it would be full of some challenges.”
A key part of Zillow’s external AI story has been the company’s Zestimate feature, which uses AI and machine learning to analyze public records, market trends, and other data points to estimate a home’s value. Other technology investments have included using computer vision models to create 3D walkthroughs of a home listing, AI-enabled virtual staging to help buyers visualize what a home might look like with different design styles, and a newer feature called SkyTour, which uses drones to capture exterior images and give a potential buyer a more comprehensive view of what the neighborhood looks like.
Beitel says LLMs are also making it simpler for Zillow shoppers to ask natural language questions, rather than having to go through pre-set search criteria. One feature is called AI Assist, a conversational assistant that can answer renter questions such as “Are utilities included in the rental?” or “Is there on-site parking?”
Last year, the company also introduced functionality within ChatGPT. A ChatGPT user can type, “ZIllow, show me apartments in the West Village, New York City, for under $5,000 per month.” The AI chatbot will then pull various listings and link to Zillow’s website or app for more information. Beitel says Zillow and OpenAI were able to launch the feature in about six weeks.
AI is also being used for simple, routine tasks like scheduling property visits. And in 2023, Zillow paid $400 million (plus $100 million in a potential cash earnout) for Follow Up Boss, a customer relationship management software system that uses AI to summarize calls and can suggest a to-do list for agents and personalized messages that can be sent to a potential client.
In the future, Zillow wants to incorporate more AI into the more complex, final stages of buying a home. Beitel says this work can be tiresome and take a lot of time, as mortgage documents are shared between clients, buying and selling agents, loan officers, home inspectors, and more. AI could make the whole experience a bit smoother, Beitel says.
“We haven’t built everything yet,” he admits. “We started at the top many years ago and we’re going deeper into the transaction.”
John Kell
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