Airbnb acquires Deco to bolster design tools & experience architecture

by Abhinav Mohapatra

Lodging and home rental solutions company, Airbnb, has acquired its React Native partner, Deco Software. The move according to a Techcrunch report is more of a acqui-hire and no financial deeds of the same have been exchanged between the two companies. According to Airbnb, Deco will help expand its platform and how it works with developers to build services on it. According to the founders of Deco Software; Devin, Gavin, David and Gabe, the firm was established to create tools that bridge the gap between designers and engineers, allowing them to mutually create products. The company began to collaborate with the teams at Airbnb that are working on design tools and React Native. Deco’s entire team will be joining Airbnb where it will continue developing design tools and experience architecture for designers and engineers. In an official blog, the founders at Deco stated that they will no longer officially support Deco IDE (integrated development environment) as a product, and it will live on as a free and open source project. React Native lets developers build mobile apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting users compose a rich mobile UI from declarative components. React Native uses the same fundamental UI building blocks as regular iOS and Android apps, this means that the team can now build native apps within Airbnb for a better app experience. Airbnb had recently raised $1 billion at a valuation of $31 billion and was planning to expand into new areas such as luxury rentals, travel tours and long term residency as well as explore the idea of becoming a full service global travel company. The lodging giant had also taken a local route in China last month and renamed itself as Aibiying, and also released Trips and Experiences (the app which offered travelers the ability to book restaurant reservations and city tours) in China.