Airbnb is close to joining a rarefied group of start-ups: the 11-digit valuation club.
The couch-surfing company is close to raising more than $400 million in a new round of financing, a person briefed on the matter said on Thursday. The fund-raising effort would value the six-year-old start-up at more than $10 billion.
Leading the round is TPG, the investment firm that has already taken stakes in other Silicon Valley darlings like the car-ride service Uber.
The fund-raising round is the latest sign of exuberance in the technology world, as the new generation of start-ups fetches eye-popping valuations. Companies like the online storage provider Dropbox have been appraised at about $10 billion, while Facebook â€" itself worth more than $172 billion â€" bought the messaging app WhatsApp for $16 billion last month.
Airbnb is among the most talked about companies of the moment. Its services let people rent out their homes, collecting a cut of the payments. But its success has also made the start-up a target of regulators who are looking into whether the business is depriving states of tax revenues.
News of the fund-raising effort was  reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
