As Om and Matt report, we closed a $29.5 million round of financing for Automattic today. Coincidentally, the closing is happening during one of our bi-annual company get-togethers, so we’ll be able to toast the occasion in person! (Team Automattic is spending the week on a ranch in the beautiful desert of Southern Arizona.)
Over the last two years, Automattic’s business has been expanding at a rapid rate. Our most prominent service, WordPress.com has grown to over 2 million bloggers. Their blogs are read by an astounding 114 million unique visitors from all over the world and over 42 million from the US every month (according to Quantcast, that makes us the #12 site in the US, ahead of sites like Facebook and Wikipedia). Revenues have been growing as well, we’ve been profitable as a business, and we’ve accomplished all of this with a fantastic team of fewer than 20 people.
Late last year we sat down to figure out how we’d like to expand our business in 2008 and beyond. Since things are working well, we didn’t want to make any major changes. However, we did set a couple of new goals. One was to put enough money in the bank to have financial security for years to come. Another was to invest more aggressively into our “other” products and services (other than WordPress) like Akismet, Gravatar, and bbPress. Today’s financing will help us achieve both of those goals.
The financing is led by our existing investors Polaris Venture Partners, True Ventures, and Radar Partners. We thank them for this solid vote of confidence. We also have an exciting new investor joining us: the New York Times. In addition to investing in us, we are also entering a partnership with the Times to expand their existing WordPress blogging infrastructure and to create new ways of connecting WordPress bloggers with the New York Times and its readers.
Update: VCMike has posted his thoughts on the deal (VCMike is Mike Hirshland, who is an Automattic board member and has led Polaris’ investment in us).
24 responses so far ↓
Braughm // January 22, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Congrats to the entire Automattic team for helping to build an amazing company!
Photo Matt » Act Two // January 22, 2008 at 9:14 pm
[...] See also: Toni Schneider. [...]
Automattic secures $29.5 million B round « Mark on WordPress // January 22, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[...] company behind WordPress.com, just secured a $29.5 million B round of financing. Congrats to Matt, Toni, and everyone else at Automattic. $29.5 million is a monster round, considering that Automattic has [...]
Blogging in Arizona | Holy Shmoly! // January 22, 2008 at 9:46 pm
[...] Act Two, Automattic Fundraising. Great news for Automattic and [...]
Wordpress lands a whopper - - mathewingram.com/work // January 22, 2008 at 9:49 pm
[...] platforms for all kinds of online content, including some small newspapers. As CEO Toni Schneider notes, the hosted version of WordPress at WordPress.com has more than 2 million blogs and is now the [...]
Automattic news - raanan.com // January 22, 2008 at 10:52 pm
[...] CEO Toni Schneider summarizes it well: Late last year we sat down to figure out how we’d like to expand our business [...]
WordPress Company Automattic Gets $29.5M - Technozzle // January 22, 2008 at 10:59 pm
[...] Coverage at TechCrunch, Mark Evans, Mathew Ingram, The Blog Herald, Photo Matt and Toni Schneider. addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Ftechnozzle.com%2F%3Fp%3D54′; addthis_title = [...]
VentureBeat » Spurning purchase offers, Automattic raises round and partners with NYT // January 22, 2008 at 11:22 pm
[...] The New York Times partnership, besides the investment, includes a plan for the Times to expand its “existing blogging infrastructure” and “create new ways of connecting WordPress bloggers with the New York Times and its readers,” Automattic chief executive Toni Schneider writes. [...]
A Fool’s Wisdom » We Raised $29.5 Million! // January 22, 2008 at 11:23 pm
[...] now Ma.tt and Toni have respectively written “Act Two”1 and “Automattic fundraising” about us, Automattic, raising a $29.5 million USD round of financing today. Our friend Om [...]
Jeffrey McManus // January 22, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Congratulations!
True Ventures » Automattic Raises $29M Series B Round // January 23, 2008 at 12:35 am
[...] to Matt, Toni & the WordPress [...]
BloggerTalks » Blog Archive » Automattic secures $29.5m in funding, WordPress creator happy // January 23, 2008 at 1:29 am
[...] WordPress (which BloggerTalks incidentally uses) by Matt Mullenweg, have raised another $29.5m in funding, with The New York Times opening its wallet. Matt himself have a post up, calling it Act 2 for [...]
NY Times invests in WordPress « I’m Simon Dickson. // January 23, 2008 at 1:53 am
[...] glancing through this morning’s RSS feeds… Automattic, the company behind WordPress, announces ‘a $29.5 million round of [...]
WordPress powers the MSM’s blogs: NY Times, WSJ, CNN, Fox, Time and People. | Midas Oracle .ORG // January 23, 2008 at 3:07 am
[...] is now used to power the blogs of many mainstream media (NY Times, WSJ, CNN, Fox, Time and People). The New York Times even invested in the WordPress company, Automattic. (Here’s the article about in the New York [...]
Cambridge Cluster » Blog Archive » 20/20 vision for Automattic // January 23, 2008 at 4:55 am
[...] 20 people, bigger than facebook and bringing in a trade investor - Wonder if Ried Hoffman gulped this one? [...]
Automattic’s Doing Something Right. | Just Thinkin' // January 23, 2008 at 2:18 pm
[...] Mullenweg, Toni Schneider and the crew at Automattic should be giving out lessons to the world’s major businesses in [...]
Automattic gets some more cash « Lance Wiggs // January 23, 2008 at 3:27 pm
[...] January 24, 2008 Internet Business , Investing , media Automattic, creators of WordPress, raised $29.5m on the 22nd of Jan. The cool thing is that alongside 3 very lucky VC firms is venerable NYTimes, [...]
Robert Miggins // January 23, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Congrats Toni and all at Automattic.
Husar.us » Blog Archive » Automattic secures $29.5 million B round // January 24, 2008 at 2:57 pm
[...] company behind WordPress.com, just secured a $29.5 million B round of financing. Congrats to Matt, Toni, and everyone else at Automattic. $29.5 million is a monster round, considering that Automattic has [...]
Fergus Burns // January 25, 2008 at 7:06 am
Congrats Toni - great to see WP flying
also congrats on the Crunchie
You will have to come to Ireland sometime soon
Best Regards
Fergus
rrhobbs.com » Blog Archive » Wordpress - $29Mil // January 26, 2008 at 6:57 pm
[...] company behind WordPress.com, just secured a $29.5 million B round of financing. Congrats to Matt, Toni, and everyone else at Automattic. $29.5 million is a monster round, considering that Automattic has [...]
Navtej Kohli // February 9, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I am a all time fan of Yours… Thanks for this great post… Automatic - Keep up the good work..
The last two months « Toni’s Garage // March 21, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[...] WordPress ← Automattic fundraising [...]
How is Automattic Going to Make Money? « Changing Way // April 29, 2008 at 8:14 am
[...] Toni and Matt each remarked at the time that the money is not just for the WordPress blogging software, but for other projects. [...]
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