The source is Airbnb themselves saying they have been EBITDA profitable for 2 years now - which is a very strong and verifiable claim for once they do go public.
There have been articles since at least mid 2018 talking about how Airbnb doesn’t need additional money and how it was taking steps to prepare for going public before early employee equity grants expired in 2020. After they reworked how they gave employees equity that summer and promised to be IPO ready by mid 2019 to assuage employees, many publications ran articles about it.
Airbnb’s last funding round was in the first months of 2017, over two years ago. There is a straightforward explanation for that. Airbnb makes money. It is that rare thing; a profitable tech company. That means it doesn’t have to run to become public quite as eagerly as other companies. Its growth can be funded by the money it takes in itself.
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Getting access to capital from a vast pool of investors is one of the main reasons companies go public. Supporting an IPO is a time consuming and expensive affair. Since Airbnb doesn’t need as much money for research and development or expanding its market, there is less incentive to IPO.
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There is one excellent reason that Airbnb will go public in 2020, though. That’s when some shares promised to employees will expire — meaning they won’t be able to reap the financial rewards that come with growing a company.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/15/ahead-of-ipo-airbnb-achiev...