NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Airbnb raises new round of $850m on $30b valuation
Online accommodation marketplace Airbnb, Inc. is raising a new round of $850 million on a $30 billion valuation, according to a filing the company made with the State of Delaware.
According to Bloomberg, the filing did not indicate who made the investment, and Airbnb has declined to comment.
The valuation figure on the round is up a solid 17.6 percent from the $25.5 billion valuation Airbnb had when it raised its last tradition round of $1.5 billion in June 2015, be it that it has since raised an additional $1 billion in debt financing in June; rumors that the company was looking to raise more money yet again appeared later that month.
The $30 billion valuation means that Airbnb, on paper at least, is now worth more than the world’s largest hotel chain, Marriott International, at $10 billion.
While Airbnb has not disclosed its current trading figures of late, it was aiming to be profitable this year while predicting that they would grow to $10 billion in revenue in 2020, up from $900 million in 2015. Achieving that figure would require the company to grow its share of the global lodging market to as much as 10 percent in the next five years from its current estimated share of 1 percent.
IPO avoidance
According to a separate report from The Wall Street Journal, the fund raised includes a $200 million stock buyback from employees, a move that is often undertaken by late-stage startups looking to remain private while offering some liquidity options of early employees; put simply it allows early employees the ability to cash out some or all of their stock without an initial public offering (IPO) or acquisition taking place.
While tech IPOs have started to pick up in the middle of the year, the market as a whole is still well down with some even going a far as describing the situation as an IPO drought.
Airbnb with a $30 billion valuation places it near the top of the list as a highly desired company but that size may also work against it as a float by a tech company the size of Airbnb is unprecedented in recent times.
Presuming the $850 million figure is correct, Airbnb has raised $3.24 billion to date from investors including SherpaCapital, TPG Growth, T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, Founders Fund, CrunchFund, Sequoia Capital, Ashton Kutcher, Andreessen Horowitz and others.
Image credit: opengridscheduler/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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