Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris' top donors—billionaire and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he had invested heavily in, by creating Monopoly boards depicting the “prison” space of the game has been replaced by “government regulation.”
Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they have spoken out against Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan's antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars to support the Biden and Harris campaigns and has pushed other wealthy tech investors to do so as well.
When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the company was valued at more than $47 billion. Hoffman sent at least a handful of other investors a Monopoly-style board game called “Airbnopoly,” according to images of the game obtained by WIRED. A top Airbnb investor confirmed he was one of several people who received the game from Hoffman and his venture firm Greylock Partners.
The box is labeled 'a production of Reid Hoffman and Greylock' and contains all the pieces typically found in the classic board game, such as cards, dice and game pieces, all with a travel theme. Instead of a top hat or thimble, players can navigate the board with an airplane seat, golf club, flip-flops, and so on. The spaces on the board have also been adjusted to include airports instead of railroads and Airbnb locations instead of the streets of Atlantic City. In one telling change, instead of a “Go to Jail” space, the board tells players to move back to a “Government Regulation” corner space. If players avoid government regulation, they will follow a path titled “Progress.”
In some places on the board, players must pay government-imposed fines, taxes, or trust and security fees. “Recent developments in American politics make you curious about life in Canada,” reads one of the game cards.
Airbnbopoly is clearly more of a novelty gift than a screed against big government. “Reid is a huge board game enthusiast and has played Settlers of Catan and the like for many years, so he created a custom board game called Settlers of Silicon Valley and gifted it to many friends,” said Aria Finger, podcast cohost and chief of staff van Hoffman told WIRED. “Then he thought a custom game for Airbnb would be a fun, unique touch, and the Monopoly board easily lent itself to Airbnb's different properties, so that's what he decided to do.”
Yet it has become public at a time when Hoffman and his Silicon Valley contemporaries have called for Khan to be fired under a possible Harris administration.
Since Khan was confirmed as chairman in 2021, the FTC has gone after tech giants like Amazon, Google and Meta for potential anti-competitive behavior. Many of these lawsuits have failed, while others are still ongoing. Khan's biggest victory came in August when a judge ruled that Google had retained an illegal monopoly in the online search market.
In 2016, Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft, and he sits on the company's board of directors. Microsoft is reportedly currently under investigation by the FTC as part of an investigation into artificial intelligence partnerships and investments. A spokesperson for Hoffman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
