Airtasker joins forces with OpenAI to unlock major usability and efficiency gains for customers

• Airtasker logs second consecutive year of positive cash free flow
• Teams up with OpenAI’s Operator for AI job postings
• AI mega trend could boost Airtasker revenue, says CEO Tim Fung

Special Report: Airtasker has notched up another year of positive free cash flow and is now teaming with OpenAI’s Operator to make outsourcing tasks simpler, smarter and more efficient for customers.

Two consecutive years of positive free cash flow is a rare achievement for a marketplace still in global expansion mode.

Airtasker (ASX:ART) has managed to deliver $1.2 million in free cash flow for FY25, after also delivering $1.2 million the year before.

CEO Tim Fung says it’s an important milestone to show the business is “definitely sustainable” and “can be very, very profitable”.

“We wanted to make it crystal clear, this business is cash generative,” he told Stockhead.

Indeed, it is clear its growth engine is firing in all three core markets.

In Q4, its Australian enterprise revenue increased by 20.7%, the UK’s revenue more than doubled, and the US revenue skyrocketed 754% from a low base, giving Airtasker real momentum on both sides of the Pacific.

While the financial footing is firm, Airtasker is playing a longer-term game than just banking cash.

Its latest swing is a hook-up with OpenAI’s Operator app, a move aimed squarely at improving customer experience: making outsourcing tasks easier, more usable and more efficient.

The strategy is straightforward: if customers start telling AI to get something done, Airtasker wants to be the first name those AIs call on.

Early signs are promising – job volumes through AI channels are already up fivefold in the last quarter.

But Airtasker’s long-term bet is that it will still own the moment when a human shows up, toolbox in hand.

“AI and autonomy are coming. It’s going to disrupt a lot of jobs,” said Fung.

“That’s going to make what Airtasker does more important than ever, to be able to support that transition and help humans have real jobs, purpose and income.”

Airtasker gets the call

For decades, Google has been the starting point for most jobs, but that’s beginning to change, with chat-based AI taking over as the interface for discovery.

About six months ago, OpenAI approached Airtasker with a list of use cases it thought would suit Operator.

Recognising this shift, Airtasker saw a natural fit for its marketplace within OpenAI’s capabilities.

Now, OpenAI is helping people better articulate and describe what tasks they need done, and Operator allows for that to go the next step further towards making it even easier to post a task on the platform.

Fung believes it’s “a new paradigm of the way that discovery works” and could be a significant growth channel over time.

“We definitely see a change that is coming on the horizon, and this allows us to discover and explain what is going to happen through that change.

“It could also be an enormous growth channel for Airtasker. Instead of turning to traditional search engines like Google or Bing, people are increasingly using agentic AI models like Operator.

“These models function less like search engines and more like answer engines – where you describe what you want to know, or what you need done, and the AI delivers a direct solution.

“For example, rather than searching through pages of results, a customer could simply say: Find me someone to assemble my IKEA furniture – and be instantly connected to a Tasker.”

Fung, however, said search remains the primary way people find services today and will be for years, even as new AI channels emerge alongside it.

But he believes the shift we are seeing now could still prove to be “an absolutely enormous paradigm change”.

Physical network is a ‘massive moat’

Some have asked whether AI like Operator could replace Airtasker’s matching algorithm.

Fung doesn’t think so.

He believes the value lies in Airtasker’s proprietary “inventory” – the micro-brands, reputations and reviews built up for each Tasker – and in the fact that most jobs happen in the physical world.

“Owning your own physical, real network is a massive differentiator, and a massive moat for us,” he said.

Directories that just list providers can be scraped and summarised by AI in seconds, but Airtasker’s network is built on communication and trust between customers and Taskers – making it harder to replicate, and much harder to replace, with automation.

The OpenAI link is just one part of the company’s AI push. Internally, teams across engineering, customer service and finance are using AI to boost productivity.

More visibly, Airtasker has introduced its own AI tools to simplify task posting.

Instead of typing out a detailed task, customers can start with “I need my lawn mowed” and then be guided through the rest.

Fung sees this as a powerful way to reduce friction, create more jobs in the marketplace and ultimately drive more revenue.

AI play is both offence and defence

The Operator partnership also serves as a live research project.

By watching how people interact with AI to post tasks, Airtasker can adapt its product to suit those behaviours directly.

“It’s a great way to observe people and see the way that they want to interact with their Tasker, and then build that into our product,” Fung said.

For investors, the AI strategy is both an offence and a defence.

On the offensive side, it’s a new distribution channel that could drive incremental demand, both in Australia and abroad.

On the defensive side, it’s insurance against the erosion of search-driven traffic.

That makes its network of human providers even more valuable as automation advances.

Cash is king, and in this case, generative

As the CEO, Fung is naturally bullish, but said the current phase shows the business model’s operating leverage.

“We have a very, very cash-generative Australian business, and we can use that cash to invest in new markets.

“And as those markets approach cash generation as well, I think that is a good time to get in – before it’s printed out on the bottom line.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Airtasker, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing. 

This article does not constitute financial product advice.  You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.