Airbnb will not go public this year, CEO Brian Chesky said
Thursday.
"Our primary focus is becoming a 21st-century company
and advancing our mission. We're working on getting ready to go public and we
will make decisions about going public on our own timetable," Chesky said.
Airbnb on Thursday also promoted Belinda Johnson to COO and
announced the departure of CFO Laurence Tosi. Johnson had been chief business
affairs and legal officer.
Tosi, the former CFO at Blackstone who joined Airbnb in
2015, had been angling for the COO position but was having disagreements with
CEO Brian Chesky, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the
situation.
Johnson joined Airbnb in late 2011 after 12 years with Yahoo.
In a 2016 Wired magazine profile, she was dubbed "the woman behind the man
who runs Airbnb" and was compared to Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and her
role in helping CEO Mark Zuckerberg grow that company.