AirBnB has a history of clever and aggressive PR, and this title is probably deliberate in that regard.

The first three google results for "billion dollar company" all refer to companies with billions in revenue.

According to Google and every economics class I ever took, people assume it refers to revenue. In common vernacular, "billion dollar company" means a company that actually generated a billion dollars in revenue, not speculative investment.

I mean come on... why is it fair to refer to AirBnB as a billion dollar company when there are actually companies generating a billion in revenue?