It has been reported that a privately owned investment company, Tiger Global has invested $50 million in WordPress.com.
The investment bought out shares of existing shareholders, including early employees, rather than directly funding the company, wrote WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in a blog post.
“Allowing early investors to lock in some returns releases any short-term pressure there might be on the company for a liquidity event and allows us to focus fully on the long road ahead,” he wrote in his post.
Automattic is the company that operates blogging service WordPress.com. Other companies that has invested in Automattic include Polaris Partners, True Ventures, and the New York Times Co.
Early this week, Yahoo announced its $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging company Tumblr. Similar to WordPress.com, Tumblr offers a publishing platform. However its revenue is advertising based while Automatic relies on paid services such as backup, plugins and managed WordPress hosting.
Tiger Global is a firm that manages hedge and private equity funds. It invests in the public and private equity markets across the globe primarily the US, China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The firm also invests in fixed income markets of United States and hedge funds. It employs fundamental analysis to make its investments. The firm typically invests in real estate, telecommunications, energy, media, and retail sectors. For real estate holding, it invests in India, China, Western, and Eastern Europe. Tiger Global Management was founded in 2001 and is based in New York, New York with additional offices in Beijing, China and Mumbai, India.
WordPress has declined to comment on the recent report.
