Rightmove boss talks down ChatGPT threat and defends AI investment
Property giant Rightmove sought to walk a tightrope when it launched its financial results on Friday, as its execs stood by the firm’s divisive AI plans while distancing themselves from silicon valley giant OpenAI.
Friday’s results offered an opportunity to calm the shareholders who wiped £1bn off the firm’s value when it announced its AI push in November, and chief executive Johan Svanstrom’s high-wire stunt was rewarded by a five per cent share boost.
The property portal is FTSE-100-listed but looks set to be pushed off the index next month, as its share price has been in steady decline since suffering a cliff-edge drop in early November.
Rightmove’s AI push, which will cost £60m over three years, has seen the property firm create Google Cloud-powered conversational search tool and a separate app for use within OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Announcing the financial results on Friday, which saw a 12 per cent uplift in profit, Svanstrom was quizzed by an analyst whether Rightmove’s partnership with ChatGPT is “feeding the beast” by keeping web traffic away from the property firm’s own site.
ChatGPT traffic ‘meaningless’
The Rightmove boss was keen to downplay the importance of ChatGPT-driven traffic, describing this audience as “meaningless” in the context of the app’s wider usership.
The property firm estimates that less than 0.5 per cent of its traffic comes from OpenAI’s chatbot, although RSM research claims 66 per cent of consumers plan to increase their use of AI for property searches.
Svanstrom said: “They’re meaningless in terms of a feed or a platform for people going after homes. It is a tool that lots of people use for different things, so for us this is a test and learn [opportunity]. We want to be where some people are.
“The really valuable aspects of data, how people navigate, what they’ve done before and what they want to do in the future will remain in the Rightmove platform.
“So yet another reason not to worry too much about some other alternative universe being built up. But, again, interesting enough to test it.”
AI ‘new front door’ to property market
James Bull, technology industry senior analyst at RSM, said: “The real challenge for Rightmove, and other platforms, is where property search begins as AI assistants become the new front door.
“The test […] will be whether the AI features introduced are able to generate an increase in average customer spend. This will be the deciding factor of whether the current margin dilution is temporary or becomes a structural feature to stay ahead of AI native newcomers.”
Svanstrom was reluctant even to talk up Rightmove’s in-house use of AI, as he initially claimed users of the conversational search function were three times more likely to pursue a sale, before throwing doubt over whether this feature has an impact at all.
“To be honest, is that cause or correlation […] it’s too early to say,” he said.
But the chief executive did defend the firm’s spend on AI, which caused downgraded profit forecasts last winter, saying: “It’s a cost to deliver opportunity. […] It’s an item to keep track of but it’s not something that concerns us particularly.”
The UK’s top property portal reported profit before tax of £290m, up 12 per cent from last year, in its financial results for the year ended December 2025.
Revenue grew nine per cent to £425m as Rightmove announced a £90m share buyback programme and upped its dividend by eight per cent to 6.59 pence.
The report predicts stronger growth in the second half of 2026, with total revenue growth for the year forecasted at eight to ten per cent.