Extended-stay furnished housing provider Zeus Living has secured $55 million in Series B funding with investments from Airbnb, Comcast, CEAS Investments and TI Platform Management, continuing this year's streak of investments in the corporate furnished housing space.
"As more companies look to Airbnb for Work for extended-stay and relocation solutions, this segment remains a key focus for Airbnb and an opportunity for us to support residents," said Zeus co-founder and CEO Kulveer Taggar in an email. Zeus has been and will continue to be listed as a "superhost" on Airbnb based on the company's host criteria, not due to the investment.
Likewise, Comcast has been working with Zeus to connect units with high-speed internet in all of the company's 2,000-plus properties. Services include one-gigabit internet speeds where available.
Zeus also plans to use the money to reach into new markets and expand its "tech-led approach to the sourcing, pricing and management of its homes." The platform that the company will build will include booking and invoicing tools for enterprise partners who use Zeus to house their employees. "We've already streamlined this process but will continue to upgrade our platform to be even more seamless for managing travel for a high volume of employees," Taggar said. "Another area of advancement is further investment in our proprietary sourcing and operations software to gain scale."
Zeus currently operates in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York, which it entered in October. It plans to use the new funds to expand to additional markets, but the company did not provide additional details on where those new markets might be.
During 2019, the company saw a sevenfold year-over-year increase in enterprise bookings, which contributed to a 300 percent rise in revenue, according to the company. It also saw its portfolio grow 300 percent year over year. The average Zeus stay is about three months. To date, Zeus has hosted more than 27,000 residents for a total of approximately 650,000 room nights.
Existing investors Alumni Ventures Group, Initialized Capital, NFX and Spike Ventures also contributed to the round. The company, founded in 2015, previously had raised $2.5 million in seed funding plus an additional $11.5 million in a Series A round, led by Initialized. Additional furnished housing providers focused on the corporate market that raised capital this year or expanded their footprints include 2nd Address, Blueground,Domio, Mint House, Oakwood and Sonder, the latter of which has raised a total of $360 million, according to Crunchbase.
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