We already knew The Huffington Post was looking for capital, but it turns out to be a little more than the $15 million the Times of London projected earlier. Kara Swisher says the political uber-blog network has in fact raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners and will announce the news later this morning (press release below).
This third round brings the total amount of funding raised to a whopping $37 million. When The HuffPo raised its $5 million Series B round in September last year, we wondered how much it was worth. Kara’s source indicates the valuation is ‘just south of $100 million’. Rafat Ali recently pegged a similar valuation.
The new capital will serve for recruitment as well as the expansion of The Huffington Post’s offerings into other areas like ‘business, green/clean-tech and investigative news’. They also leave the door open for ’select and focused acquisitions’. Oak Investment Partners has a relevant investment track record, having funded companies like Federated Media (TechCrunch’s advertising partner), Demand Media, MobiTV, Oberon Media and others in the past.
In an interview with BoomTown, Oak’s Fred Harman said:
There is an inevitable shift from offline to online with people increasingly getting their news media online, and this election proved how powerful the Huffington Post could be. And I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site.
Harman, who will be joining The HuffPo’s board, also added:
The cycle of print media is accelerating downward and there are not as many companies with a balance sheet and focus to do it right online. The news market is really up for grabs in a lot of ways … and it is a good time for those who are viewed as authoritative.
Comscore’s traffic report of the blogging network seems to reflect that The Huffington Post is in fact doing something right.
Update: here’s the full press release:
The Huffington Post Announces $25 Million In Funding From Oak Investment Partners
New York, NY (December 1, 2008)–The Huffington Post, a leading news and opinion site, today announced that it has secured $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The Huffington Post (”HuffPost”) will use the proceeds to invest in the growth of the company and for select and focused acquisitions. The company said it would invest in its technology and infrastructure, increase its in-house advertising capabilities, and continue to expand its content offerings–including a new investigative journalism initiative and a rollout of local versions of The Huffington Post in select cities. The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, co-founders of The Huffington Post.
“This commitment from Oak Investment Partners will allow us to accelerate our growth, with more verticals, more video, more citizen journalism initiatives, more cities for our local editions, and a fund for investigative journalism,” said Arianna Huffington. “We are particularly excited to have Fred Harman of Oak join our board; his deep knowledge of the new media landscape will help us to take HuffPost to the next level.”
Said Kenneth Lerer: “We are thrilled to bring on board a partner like Oak to work with Softbank Capital and Greycroft as we move forward. Since launching the site three and half years ago, the company has built a strong brand and an audience of millions who rely on the site for its mix of smart news and opinion. The additional capital from Oak will enable us to go full-steam ahead with operations and select acquisitions.”
Fred Harman, general partner at Oak Investment Partners, said, “Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle. We believe that The Huffington Post has built a platform and business model to be among the leaders in aggregating this audience online. Our financing will provide the resources necessary to scale the company, both organically as well as through acquisitions of additional talent and new media companies. We are also very excited to have the opportunity to back Arianna and the company’s strong entrepreneurial team.”
Betsy Morgan, CEO of The Huffington Post, said, “With funding from Oak, The Huffington Post is perfectly positioned to build on its incredible growth. Oak brings to the table a team with enormous experience and insight, and we look forward to working with them to seize the opportunities ahead of us.”
The Series C financing round comes as The Huffington Post continues to experience significant growth following the expansion of the site in 2007, when HuffPost began rolling out a variety of new sections, including entertainment, politics, media, living, style and green. The site also started its first local version, HuffPost Chicago. This year, The Huffington Post received widespread attention for its original reporting on the 2008 presidential race, including the coverage provided by its OffTheBus team of citizen journalists. HuffPost currently has 46 employees.
Harman joins The Huffington Post board of directors, whose members include: Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner of Softbank Capital, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Betsy Morgan.
The Huffington Post kicks ass. Hats off to the Oak Investment Partners.
the curve says up and to the right… let’s hope it continues to climb.
I’m sure being on the digg “white list” of approved sites, and completely gaming the system with multiple home page stories per day will show a spike in traffic.
You been drinkin that hateorade?
lol Not everything is about Digg. What’s worth more? 1000 visitors visiting once or 100 visitors visiting 100 times? Huffingtonpost.com is the best political site on the net (for the good guys lol).
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http://www.tech....com/pop/blogs/
THIS may have had a lot to do with it!
It just keeps getting more extreme each passing week…
HuffPo Coverup of MURDER! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/g0lWJlO4Sp_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”HuffPo Coverup of MURDER! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/vRNMhy9CDt”}}}
http://www.isra...splaced-eulogy/
http://deliciou.../huffingtonpost
You look at the atrociously designed site and go wtf. Then you start reading and this funding is well worth it. The go-to site for the “good guys” during this past campaign.
Nice site. Wish it wasn’t so full of hate. Have you read the comments? Wow… Where is the political opinion site that depends on facts and compelling thought rather than nutty accusations and tabloid silliness.. Thats something I would love to invest in.
Good. I love the Huffington Post.
I think that traffic graph may be misleading, though, because it stops right before the election. HuffPo has benefitted greatly from the long Obama campaign and it’ll be nothing short of amazing if they are able to continue such aggressive growth. They won a lot of audience this past year… we’ll see.
a new alternative with more of an international spin on the news is tina brown’s http://www.thedailybeast.com. apparently doing 50% of huffpo’s traffic after their first 6 weeks. definitely the future model for “print” media
See what Digg can do!
See what cult of celebrity for obama can do!
Not worth it.
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Jeff Holstein, the manager of Tempeltoncapital.com said energy stocks were reflecting an overly gloomy outlook for the underlying commodity prices. For example, he said oil companies were trading at the end of the third quarter as if the average oil price over the next five years would be around $65 a barrel, while he predicted it would be about $90 to $95.