When news broke this morning that Airbnb had supposedly raised a $117 million Series C, the only possible response was: Damn, that’s a nice chunk of change, and one in line with expectations. However, it appears that, in all the anticipation over another major round, the gun has been jumped.
When we reached out for comment, Airbnb gave us the following statement of denial:
Airbnb filed a Form D today with the Securities and Exchange Commission covering the company’s issuance of shares of its preferred stock as a part of its Series B financing, which initially closed over a year ago, on July 22, 2011. Today’s filing was a customary notification related to the company’s prior Series B financing, and is unrelated to any other financing that the company may choose to undertake in the future.
Chalk it up to the trickiness of reporting on SEC filings, which are written for lawyers rather than us mere mortals: Companies have a whole year to file after raising a round, and sometimes convertible notes have been confused for raises.
There’s also the fact that everyone in the tech press is eagerly anticipating news from Airbnb. TechCrunch reported back in September that the company was in the process of raising a major round, and the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Peter Thiel is in talks to invest as much as $150 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. But so far, none of the names being tossed around seem willing to talk.
And so, we wait.
