Airbnb Exec Donates $100 Million to San Francisco Parks in Record Gift to City
San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie announced on Monday that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is donating $100 million to the city’s parks.
The donation to the department represents the largest donation in the city by a single donor, said Lurie at a press conference at Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory of Flowers.
“We have seen an extraordinary creation of wealth and innovation in our city,” Lurie said. “And with that, comes enormous responsibility, opportunity, and obligation.”
Lurie said he hoped AirBnB’s donation will prompt more San Francisco-based entrepreneurs to support the city financially.
“Now is the time, our city is coming back,” Lurie said “Please don’t watch from the sidelines, be a part of it.”
Chesky co-founded short-term rental company Airbnb in 2008 and the company is currently worth $100 billion. According to Forbes, Chesky’s personal net worth is over $13 billion.
“There is something truly special here in San Francisco,” Chesky said. “Much of my success, I attribute to the magic and to the community that is San Francisco.”
According to the mayor’s office, Chesky worked with Lurie for months on supporting the city with funding city-run services.
At Monday’s press conference, Chesky said he wanted his investment to help San Francisco residents interact with each other, calling parks as “the most vibrant way you can come together in a city.”
“The best antidote to division is connection. That connection has to happen physically and in real spaces, and maybe the parks can be one of those places,” Chesky said.
Chesky’s donation strikes a somewhat friendlier tone today between Airbnb and the city than in the past. While Lurie’s predecessor London Breed was in office, the company launched a $120 million lawsuit against San Francisco, claiming the city had incorrectly calculated what the company owed in taxes.
The suit, which led the city’s labor unions, advocacy groups and some elected officials to call for an Airbnb boycott, was settled earlier this year for $0.
Where will the money go?
Sarah Madland, general manager of the parks department, told KQED the money is expected to be distributed to the department in two phases – with the first installment potentially arriving as early as this year or the beginning of 2027.
That first portion has been committed to five projects already underway, Madland said. That includes $39 million headed to Rachele Sullivan Park in SOMA, renovations at Jackson Hill Playground in Potrero Hill, keeping Garfield Pool in the Mission open on Sundays, renovations at the Embarcadero and completing India Basin Waterfront Park in Hunters Point.
“These are projects that are ready to go and have broad community support, have plans in place, but we haven’t been able to put together that last piece of funding,” Madland said.
The department plans to spend the next year deciding where the second half of the money will go, according to Madland. Any money coming to the department must first be reviewed and approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Donations to the parks department are common, Madland said, so much so that the agency has actually received around $300 million in the last 15 years.
In fact, prior to this gift, the largest private donation made to city parks was $25 million from the John Pritzker Family Fund to kickstart the India Basin project in 2019.
Chesky’s is now the largest philanthropic gift the city —- not just this department — has ever received.
Madland said she is “thrilled” about the gift, and that a donation of this size is “game-changing” for the city’s parks department. For reference, Madland noted that this $100 million constitutes about half of the size of a typical general obligation bond, a common type of voter-approved loan for projects that don’t generate revenue.
“This is half as much as the amount of capital that we get almost every decade,” she said.