The move could have major implications for Steyer’s efforts to sway the 2016 elections after Steyer’s group NextGen has spent more than $100 million of his personal fortune to support green-minded candidates and ballot initiatives in the past five years. Steyer has largely operated in a chairman-of-the-board role, setting big-picture goals rather than guiding operations and strategy, a job that was handed to Lehane.

In that role, Lehane successfully helped the campaigns of Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2013, but a year later saw most of Steyer’s favored Senate and gubernatorial candidates lose, part of a wider pattern of Democratic losses.

With the move to become Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs, Lehane becomes the latest political heavyweight to join the tech sector, following the moves by White House spokesman Jay Carney to Amazon, White House adviser David Plouffe to Uber, and former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to Apple.

Lehane, who has worked as an outside consultant with Airbnb for about a year, said the move is because he shares a common vision with the home-sharing service, but that he remained close to Steyer.

“Tom is one of my best friends and will continue to be one of my best friends,” Lehane said in an email to POLITICO.

He lives just blocks from Steyer in the Bay Area, Lehane said, meaning “I can just wander over at night and hear about what the big part he is playing to save the planet for my kids (and everyone’s kids).”

Political operatives said NextGen’s 2014 efforts had relied too heavily on flashy ads rather than get-out-the-vote efforts, and that he had neglected to collaborate with the Democratic committees in an election where conservatives and the GOP worked in lockstep — and that he overestimated the prominence of climate change as a political issue.

But NextGen Climate Action PAC struggled to raise cash from donors set ahead of the election, falling far short of the $50 million target that was designed to double the $50 million that Steyer contributed.

A nonprofit branch of Steyer’s environmental operations, Next Generation, recently ended its climate policy work, an indicator that Steyer will focus resources more on his NextGen Climate Action super PAC.

NextGen Climate did not return multiple requests for comment on Thursday.

The PAC had more than $4.6 million on hand at the end of July, and it maintains a number of staffers in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Coincidentally, the super PAC recently spent some money via Airbnb. NextGen Climate Action paid nearly $500 for an unspecified facility rental at the end of July, as well as a total of $800 on travel-related expenditures.

Still, Dan Weiss, the League of Conservation Voters’ senior VP for campaigns, said he expects the Steyer operation will keep humming along.

“Tom Steyer and NextGen will continue to lead successful efforts to amplify the public’s demand for climate action,” Weiss said by email. “And they will continue to increase the political benefits to candidates that advocate clean energy investments and pollution reductions, and raise the political costs for those who oppose them.”

Lehane assisted President Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 and served in his administration before joining Vice President Al Gore’s team and working as his press secretary in his unsuccessful 2000 campaign. In the private sector, Lehane has represented a number of key tech players and figures, from working on AT&T’s successful merger with DirecTV to assisting Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on his successful bid to buy the Los Angeles Clippers.

Airbnb, which has a value approaching $25 billion and is widely seen as considering an IPO, said in a blog post that Lehane “will be directing [the company’s] work with policymakers and our efforts to educate more people, organizations and stakeholders about Airbnb and the right to share your home.”

His work to date with Airbnb includes advising on a company campaign against a San Francisco ballot measure that would limit short-term rentals in the city and cost the company $58 million, according to its estimates. The measure goes to a vote on Nov. 3.

Lehane’s arrival at Airbnb comes as David Hantman, the company’s previous global public policy leader, prepares to move into a new “consulting role,” the company said in its post.

Airbnb touts its home-sharing service as better for the environment than staying in hotels. In a 2014 report, the company estimated that per guest per night in North America, using Airbnb means 61 percent less in greenhouse gas emissions than hotels, as well as 12 percent less water consumption and 32 percent less waste.

Tony Romm and Darius Dixon contributed to this report.