> former CFO Laurence Tosi, who had previously worked Blackstone Group as CFO, took Airbnb’s cash flow and created an internal hedge fund.

> According to Bloomberg, Tosi “quietly built a hedge fund within the company’s finance department. He used a portion of capital from the balance sheet to buy stocks, currencies, and fixed-income securities, mimicking the treasury fund he ran at Blackstone. The side project represented 30 percent of the company’s cash flow last year and made about $5 million a month for Airbnb, the people said.”

For what its worth, its easy to make money in a low volatile, bull market. I'd be really interested to know how that fund does in the upcoming weeks.

Original source is the bloomberg article which was discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322070

Aside from the implication in the article (that this activity skewed the company's profits) is this normal for companies?

If so, if I am a investor in such a company (hypothetical, I'm not an investor) would I be concerned that the company is taking market risks with their money instead of investing in things like marketing and R&D?

I mean, clearly it works for them (so far) but any investment is risky. As an investor I would assume that if I wanted to invest in the market I would have put it in a full-time hedge fund or wealth management company.