Expedia Group Cuts Eight Product and Technology VPs in AI Reorganization

Eight senior product and technology leaders have left Expedia Group in a reorganization the company attributes directly to artificial intelligence. For hotels and rental operators, the relevant detail is which teams were reshuffled: the ones that own checkout, payments, fraud prevention and the partner-facing stack.

The departures were confirmed to PhocusWire on 21 August. Expedia Group said it is "evolving our product and technology organization to better align engineering and product teams with the brands and businesses they support."

An internal memo sent on Tuesday, signed by chief product officer Shilpa Ranganathan and chief technology officer Ramana Thumu, put the reasoning more bluntly. The company said it needs "to move a lot faster, and, over the past year, AI has radically changed what's possible." GeekWire published the memo in full.

The most senior person leaving is Sachin Singh, SVP of book-to-trip technology. The memo credited him with work on checkout, fraud prevention, payments, servicing and AI. Seven vice presidents also left: Sara Beckmann, Matt Esler, Amitabh Ghosh, Emil Riccardi, Ian Butcher, Shao Xie and Fiona Stevenson. All held product and technology roles.

What moves where

The reorganization goes beyond the exits. Expedia Group is consolidating teams into two groupings it calls "dedicated technology" and "product and technology." Its data, AI and agentic platforms now sit under Xavi Amatriain, the company's chief data and AI officer. Rick Fast was promoted to chief architect.

Expedia Group described most of the change as internal movement rather than cuts. "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, some of which is focused on supporting our AI strategy and vision," the company said. It added that several leaders were promoted as part of the new structure.

This is the second structural change at Expedia Group this year. Earlier in 2026 the company moved its B2B and global supply organizations under Alfonso Paredes, who was then named chief commercial officer and president of B2B. Supply and B2B are the two functions most hoteliers and property managers deal with directly.

The headcount story underneath

Expedia Group frames the reorganization as an AI story, and the timing supports that reading. On its second quarter 2026 earnings call earlier this month, the company said it is investing both in AI that converts and in AI that does not yet convert.

The longer trend is simpler. Expedia Group reported roughly 16,000 employees across almost 50 countries at the end of 2025, with about half in technology roles. That is down from 16,500 at the end of 2024 and 17,100 at the end of 2023. The company cut an unspecified number of roles in January 2026 while hiring for others, following layoffs in March 2025 and the removal of up to 1,500 jobs announced in February 2024 after then-CEO Peter Kern stepped down. As of Friday the company listed 191 open roles across 15 countries.

For partners, leadership churn of this kind usually shows up in two ways: roadmap dates that slip and account contacts who change. Anyone with an open integration request, a payments issue or a pending extranet change with Expedia Group would do well to confirm who now owns it before assuming the timeline holds.