Ashton Kutcher Invests in Airbnb

According to an announcement posted to the Airbnb blog, Ashton Kutcher, star of television programs That ‘70s Show and Punk'd and films such as Dude Where's My Car?, has made a "significant investment" in Airbnb.com. He also will join the team of this San Francisco-based vacation rental startup as a strategic advisor.

In addition to his Hollywood profile, Kutcher has been keeping up one of the world's most popular Twitter accounts. And he has invested in a number of successful tech startups, such as SeatGeek, Hipmunk, Flipboard, Foursquare and Skype, which recently was acquired by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for $8.75 billion.

Airbnb's site allows users to book privately-owned spaces, such as a couch, a room or a house, in the same way one would book a hotel room online. Airbnb users have made more than a million reservations from some 60,000 listings across the United States and Europe.

The company had already built up a customer base and raised $7.2 million from Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. But with Kutcher's name attached, Airbnb may get the push it needs to become the go-to place for vacation rentals and to knock off imitator sites that have cropped up.

Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.