Tesla adds Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia to Board of Directors

Tesla announced on Wednesday it has added a new member to its Board of Directors, welcoming co-founder of Airbnb Joe Gebbia in a securities filing and blog post on its website.

Gebbia’s addition comes after former board member and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison vacated his seat earlier this summer.

Gebbia has an estimated net worth of around $7 billion, and also serves on the board for both Airbnb and Airbnb.org, after departing the company he helped start 14 years ago.

Tesla gave a short background of Gebbia in its blog post welcoming him to the board.

“Gebbia, a designer and entrepreneur, has spent the last 14 years of his career as co-founder of Airbnb. The service he built with his co-founders transformed the hospitality industry, allowing travelers seeking local experiences to book homes in nearly every country around the world. Since the 2007 inception in his San Francisco living room, Airbnb has enabled mutual trust for over 4M hosts to share their homes. Hosts have since welcomed more than 1B guest arrivals and earned over $150B, creating economic impact worldwide. As the original designer and host, Gebbia helped shape Airbnb’s product, interface, and brand to become a household name. His entrepreneurial instinct also led to the formation of their community-powered non-profit, Airbnb.org. With the mission to open homes in times of crisis, their emergency response efforts have housed over 200,000 people during natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global refugee crisis,” Tesla wrote.

According to the Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gebbia officially became a board member on September 25, 2022.

The filing also reveals Gebbia opted not be compensated for his role on the board until July 2023.

Gebbia’s seat on the Board of Director is likely months in the making. In July CEO Elon Musk congratulated him after announcing his decision to leave Airbnb after spending 14 years at the helm.