Airbnb Hedge Fund Report Is a Sign That This Unicorn Is Growing Up

Airbnb has its own hedge fund? Well, not exactly. We’ve heard of a “hedge fund hotel” before — that’s what Wall Street traders call a company with high hedge fund ownership — but a lodging company operating its own hedge fund is unusual. That’s why it piqued our interest when Bloomberg reported that then-chief financial officer Laurence Tosi, who was forced out a couple of weeks ago, was running a hedge fund within Airbnb. Bloomberg reported that the fund was similar to one Tosi ran when he was Blackstone CFO, and that it generates $5 million a month for Airbnb, representing 30 percent of overall cash flow. The only problem is that, although Blackstone operates a number of leading hedge funds, Tosi never managed any of them. Instead, as the CFO for both Blackstone and later Airbnb, Tosi's job was to oversee each respective organizations’ corporate treasuries, the divisions responsible for managing the businesses’ daily cash needs. Down the Rabbit Hole Corpo