Four years ago, one of the top donors to Vice President Kamala Harris—the founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—who was a billionaire—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company in which he had invested heavily, by making Monopoly boards where the “prison” area of the game was replaced. “government laws.”
Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support his campaign. While they often praise Harris as a pro-business politician, they have been vocal about their distaste for Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Lina Khan’s agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential contributors to that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars to support the campaigns of Biden and Harris and arranged with other wealthy technology investors to do so.
When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the company was valued at over $47 billion. Hoffman sent at least a handful of other investors a Monopoly-themed board game called “Airbnopoly,” according to footage of the game obtained by WIRED. A top Airbnb investor confirmed that he was one of the few people who got a match from Hoffman and his venture firm Greylock Partners.
The box is labeled “a production of Reid Hoffman and Greylock,” and contains all the pieces that are usually included in a 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 chair, golf club, flip flops, and so on. Spaces on the board are customized, too, to include airports instead of railroads and Airbnb locations rather than the streets of Atlantic City. In one variation, instead of the “Go to Jail” space, the board tells players to return to the “Government Law” corner space. When players avoid government regulations, they move on to a path titled “Progress.”
Some areas on the board require players to pay government fines, taxes, or trust and security fees. “Recent developments in American politics make you curious about living in Canada,” reads one of the game’s cards.
Airbnbopoly is clearly a new offering from central government. “Reid is a big fan of board games, played Settlers of Catan, and so on, for years, so he made a custom board game called Settlers of Silicon Valley and gave it to a lot of friends,” said Aria Finger, podcast. cohost and Hoffman’s chief of staff told WIRED. “Then Airbnb thought that a custom game would be a great, unique act, and the Monopoly board lent itself easily to various Airbnb rentals, so they decided on that.”
Still, it has come to light 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 potentially anti-competitive behavior. Most of these cases have failed, while others are still ongoing. Khan’s biggest win came in August when a judge found that Google maintained an illegal monopoly on the Internet search market.
In 2016, Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft, and remains on the company’s board. Microsoft is reportedly currently under investigation by the FTC as part of an investigation into its dealings and investments in artificial intelligence. A spokesman for Hoffman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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