Twitter closes massive funding round
The company has confirmed the funding but not the dollar amount. A report pegs it at $200 million, valuing the company at $3.7 billion.
A much-reported funding round for Twitter is finally complete, AllThingsD first reported earlier today. The dollar amount is $200 million at a $3.7 billion valuation, led by investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and along with it Twitter has brought Mike McCue, CEO of buzzy iPad app start-up Flipboard, and David Rosenblatt, former CEO of DoubleClick.
The company has confirmed the funding round and additions to the board--amusingly calling it a "stocking stuffer"--but isn't releasing any further information about how it will be funneled into product strategy or hiring. Presumably, Twitter will continue to ramp up engineering resources (both human and technical) to support a growing user base while its advertising product remains in a malleable, experimental phase. The round will also likely allow early employees to cash out some company stock--much as Facebook did when Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies first invested in the social network.
Twitter's last funding round was slightly over a year ago, and was no small amount--about $100 million, a round which one early Twitter investor later said was not orchestrated out of financial need.
The company aggressively has shifted into "business mode" over the past nine months or so, announcing its first revenue strategy in April. In October, CEO Evan Williams stepped aside so that the more finance- and operations-focused Dick Costolo could take over.