Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is 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’ve been vocal in their dislike of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars in support of the Biden and Harris campaigns and has organized 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 board game styled after Monopoly called “Airbnopoly,” according to images of the game obtained by WIRED. A top Airbnb investor confirmed that he was one of several people who received the game from Hoffman and his venture firm Greylock Partners.
The box is labeled as “a Reid Hoffman and Greylock production,” and it contains all of the pieces typically included in the classic board game, like cards, dice, and game pieces—all with a travel theme. Instead of a top hat or a thimble, players can navigate the board with an airplane seat, golf club, flip flops, and so on. The spaces on the board are customized, too, to include airports instead of railroads and Airbnb locations rather than Atlantic City streets. In one telling modification, instead of a “Go to Jail” space, the board tells players to go back to a “Government Regulation” corner space. If players avoid government regulation, they move across a path titled “Progress.”
Some spaces on the board require the players to pay government-issued fines, taxes, or trust and safety fees. “Recent developments in American politics make you curious about living in Canada,” reads one of the game’s cards.
Airbnbopoly is clearly more of a novelty gift than a screed against big government. “Reid is a huge lover of board games, having played Settlers of Catan, et cetera, for many, many years, so he made a custom board game called Settlers of Silicon Valley and gifted it to many friends,” says Aria Finger, podcast cohost and chief of staff for Hoffman told WIRED. “Then for Airbnb he thought a custom game would be a nice, unique gesture, and the Monopoly board easily lent itself to Airbnb’s various rentals, so he decided on that.”
Still, 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 chair in 2021, the FTC has gone after tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta for possible anticompetitive behavior. Many of these lawsuits have failed, while others are ongoing. Khan’s biggest win came in August when a judge found that Google had maintained an illegal monopoly in the online search market.
In 2016, Hoffman sold LinkedIn to Microsoft, and he sits on the company’s board. Microsoft is reportedly currently under FTC investigation as part of a probe into collaborations and investments in artificial intelligence. A spokesperson for Hoffman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Lina Khan is … a person who is not helping America,” Hoffman told CNN after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential contest in July. “I would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her.”
Senator Bernie Sanders intimated in a CNN interview in August that Hoffman’s political donations were an attempt to influence policy and agency appointments, a claim Hoffman has vehemently denied.
Hoffman isn’t the only tech industry leader calling on Khan to be replaced while boosting Democrats this election cycle. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla recently said Khan was “not a rational person” at a conference over the summer. Mark Cuban told Semafor that he would remove her from the FTC if it was his decision to make.
“By trying to break up the biggest tech companies, you risk our ability to be the best in artificial intelligence,” Cuban said.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk wrote on X that Khan would “be fired soon,” suggesting that an incoming Trump administration would remove her from her post.
On the Airbnbopoly board, players lose when they can no longer afford to pay their mortgages and creditors, and declare bankruptcy. The last Airbnb host standing wins the game.
Source : Wired
