Jeff Bezos Backed Airbnb Before Its IPO, He Also Invested In This Company

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Back in 2011, Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos invested in Airbnb Inc’s (NASDAQ: ABNB) Series B through his personal venture-capital firm, Bezos Expeditions.

According to Pitchbook data, the round totaled $112 million in fundraising for Airbnb, with investments from Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE: UBER) CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, among others.

While it's unclear how much Bezos invested in the firm at the time or whether he still holds all of his shares, the stock IPO'd for $68 per share and has not returned to that level.

He wasn't done with the expanding vacation rental business. Bezos also invested in Arrived Homes, a Seattle-based real estate investment business that lets investors acquire shares in single-family rental homes and vacation rental properties to its platform.

Read also: Housing Affordability Index: What This Tells You About Price Pressure

Arrived Homes, which launched in 2021, offers multiple properties that allow individual investors to purchase shares for as little as $100 as it attempts to democratize access to the wealth-building potential of real estate ownership beyond affluent people and institutional buyers.

The start-up secured $25 million in Series A investment, allowing it to add more asset categories and expand its personnel. It already has 197 single-family rental homes in 27 areas across the United States, totaling more than $72 million in asset value.

Arrived platform investors may earn passive income as the firm manages all real estate activities, including property upkeep to acquisitions.

The Bezos-backed firm intends to grow into more US areas such as Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Indiana.

Arrived Homes is the newest marketplace to strive to simplify the investing process and decrease obstacles to access by broadening its real estate portfolio into the short-term rental asset class.

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