Home-sharing start-up Airbnb Inc raised more than US$100 million in a new funding round that kept its value at about US$25.5 billion, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.
The latest fundraising round was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said the San Francisco-based firm generated US$340 million in the recently ended fiscal quarter on bookings of US$2.2 billion.
The revenue and bookings figures were approximately double those seen a year earlier.
Airbnb expects to become profitable next year, a source close to the firm said while confirming details of the funding round.
Airbnb is among the most prominent of the “sharing economy” start-ups, helping property dwellers rent a room or their entire residence, while stirring concerns about unfair competition.
Some critics also claim the start-up provides an incentive for property owners to toss out long-term residents and convert lodgings to short-term rentals, creating an upheaval in the traditional market for rentals.
The company earlier this month promised to pay taxes and not cut into long-term housing amid criticism it unfairly competes with hotels and has exacerbated a San Francisco housing crisis.
The surging start-up released a so-called Community Compact in which it vowed to pay its “fair share” of hotel and tourist taxes.
It also pledged to be transparent with information about home sharing activity and to work to prevent short-term rentals from biting into the availability of long-term housing.
The more cooperative tone was struck shortly after San Francisco voters rejected a measure that would have limited short-term housing rentals in what was seen as a referendum on Airbnb, which allows property dwellers and owners to rent out a room or an entire home for short periods.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day