Billionaire Peter Thiel toys with $150M investment in Airbnb

Psst. Word on the street is that social-network famous serial investor Peter Thiel wants to pump as much as $150 million into community-powered hotel alternative Airbnb.

Facebook’s first outside investor is said to be considering an astronomical investment that would value the four-year-old startup at $2.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The intel adds some color to an earlier TechCrunch story that pegged Airbnb’s third funding round as a monstrous one.

Airbnb, a former Y Combinator company, has raised more than $120 million dollars to date. The company’s most recent funding round, closed last summer, catapulted it into the lofty category of startups worth more than $1 billion.

The additional fuel would surely go a long way in financing the startup’s growth and whatever legal woes arise from local governments not yet embracing the secondary market for renters and homeowners. And Thiel’s certainly got millions to spare. The billionaire PayPal co-founder recently cashed in the majority of his remaining holdings in Facebook for a cool $395.8 million.

Existing Airbnb investors Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital are expected to re-up in the round, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Airbnb declined to comment on this story.

Photo courtesy of Marc Olivier Le Blanc/Airbnb