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Blueground Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

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PPP
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  • Category: travel and hospitality
  • Pandemic layoffs: 130 employees, 25% of staff (Layoffs.fyi, April 2020)
  • Last updated: 2026-09-25

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: a New York-based operator of furnished apartments for stays of a month or longer, which cut a quarter of its staff in the first weeks of the pandemic and received a $2.2 million PPP loan about two weeks later.
  • What Blueground did for customers: leased apartments, furnished them and rented them for 30-plus-day stays to individuals and corporate clients.
  • What broke in the pandemic: in the week before April 8, 2020 it laid off 130 people, mostly in business roles, in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.
  • Relief role: none; it was not a lender, referral agent or relief contractor.
  • Own relief: a $2,216,140 PPP loan to Blueground US, Inc., approved April 15, 2020 and forgiven in full with interest in July 2021.

Founders, Executives, and Investors

Alex Chatzieleftheriou founded the company in 2013, after years of living in hotels as a McKinsey consultant, and was still CEO in March 2024. The company's own timeline names Alexis Maragkos as his co-founder at the start, when the business was called C&V Housing, and Andreas Nezeritis and Penny Papakonstantinou as later co-founders.

The same timeline lists the funding: €20,000 from Chatzieleftheriou's mother, a $1.3 million round from VentureFriends and angel investors, a $6.2 million Series A, and a $50 million Series B from WestCap and Prime Ventures. It also names Kevin Ryan as an investor and board member. The company puts its Series C at $180 million and its valuation then at $750 million; TechCrunch reported the Series C, in September 2021, as $140 million at a reported $750 million. Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, a new investor, and WestCap were among the backers of a $45 million Series D in March 2024.

Business Before the Pandemic

Blueground leased apartments in popular neighborhoods, furnished and equipped them, and rented them for stays of a month or more. It opened in Athens, launched Istanbul and Dubai after its second round, and chose New York as its first U.S. market.

What the Pandemic Changed

Layoffs.fyi reported on April 8, 2020 that Blueground had laid off 130 people, 25% of its staff, the previous week, joining many other real estate startups. About two weeks later, on April 15, SBA approved a $2,216,140 PPP loan to Blueground US, Inc., at 498 Seventh Avenue in New York. The loan record reports 131 jobs, allocates $1,660,140 to payroll and $556,000 to utilities, and names Silicon Valley Bridge Bank as the originating lender and First-Citizens Bank & Trust as the servicer. It was forgiven on July 27, 2021 for $2,244,457.34, principal plus interest.

TechCrunch reported in 2024 that business for short-term furnished rentals was booming "at the height of the pandemic" as people roamed the world while working from home, and that demand for temporary housing cratered once employers called workers back to offices.

Business After the First Shock

Blueground bought companies in its field while some rivals failed. In 2022 it acquired Tabas, which ran more than 9,000 furnished apartments in Brazil, and then Travelers Haven, a U.S. provider of on-demand housing for workers. In 2023 it acquired Nestpick, a marketplace for furnished-apartment operators, and used it to build a partner network of another 18,000 apartments. TechCrunch listed Zeus Living and WanderJaunt among the rivals that shut down. In 2021 Blueground borrowed $40 million from Silicon Valley Bank; in 2024 a Barclays facility, with Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and HSBC, replaced and enlarged that debt.

Where the Company Is Now

In March 2024 Blueground said it ran 15,000 units in 32 cities and served more than 4,000 businesses, and it had signed its first franchise deals, with Mitsubishi Real Estate in Japan and Chic Republic in Thailand. Chatzieleftheriou told TechCrunch that sales reached $560 million in 2023, against $300 million of gross revenue in 2022, that gross margin was about 35%, and that he expected positive cash flow in 2024. He did not disclose a new valuation but said it had risen since the Series C. In June 2026 the company's website listed 1,000 employees and a 2025 target of 200 cities and 50,000 apartments.

Source Notes

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