Facebook Raises $500 Million in Funding, Now Worth $50 Billion

Facebook has received a massive new round of funding: $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 million from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, according to a new report.

Facebok has raised over $800 million over five rounds of funding. With this round, the social network will have raised over $1.3 billion. The New York Times says that the deal sets the social network’s valuation at a whopping $50 billion. Facebook’s worth has fluctuated between $40 and $50 billion in the secondary markets for the last few weeks. In September, Facebook was worth between $23 billion and $33 billion and in Novemberit was worth $41 billion.

As part of the deal, Goldman Sachs will help the social network raise an additional $1.5 billion. To do this, the investment bank will create a “special purpose vehicle” that will allow others to invest in Facebook indirectly. This would help the social network bypass an S.E.C. regulation that requires companies with more than 499 investors to disclose their financial results to the public.

Goldman Sachs will be a first-time investor in Facebook, while Russian venture capital firm Digital Sky Technologies had previously invested $200 million in the company Mark Zuckerberg built at a $10 billion valuation. According to the NYT report, Goldman Sachs has the option to sell $75 million of its stake to DST.

It’s unclear what Facebook will do with the money. It could cash out some of its employees and existing investors with that money or go on a hiring spree. It has so much money now that it will likely do both.

via: mashable.com

30 Fascinating Facebook Facts

1. Al Pacino’s face was on the original Facebook homepage
2. One early Facebook function was a file sharing service
3. The first “Work Networks” as well as the original educational networks  included Apple and Microsoft
4. The meaning of the term poke has never been defined
5. The average Facebook user has 130 friends
6. There is an ‘App’ to see what’s on the Facebook cafe menu
7. Mark Zuckerburg (CEO of Facebook) calls himself a “Harvard Graduate” when in fact he didn’t graduate (apparently his reply is that “there isn’t a setting for dropout”)
8. California is huge on Facebook with over 15 million users (41% of the population)
9. Australian’s spend more time per month on Facebook than any other country at over 7 hours on average
10. A Facebook employee hoodie sold for $4,000 on eBay
11. Facebook has over 500 million users
12. Facebook has added over 400 million users in less than 2 years
13. If  Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest
14. Facebook was initially bank-rolled by Peter Thiel the co-founder of PayPal for $500,000
15. Facebook was almost shut down by a lawsuit by ConnectU who claimed that Zuckerburg stole the idea and Technology for Facebook (the issue was settled out of court)
16. 50% of users are on the site every day
17. 70% of users live outside the USA
18. Facebook is available in 70 different languages
19. It is the second biggest website by traffic behind Google and YouTube
20. Yahoo offered Facebook $1 billion which Mark Zuckerburg refused
21. Facebook is now valued between $7.9 – $11 billion
22. Most Popular Facebook page is Michael Jackson (Simpsons is second)
23. Monthly time spent on Facebook is 8.3 billion hours
24. Total number of  of active applications: 550,000 plus and growing daily
25. Women aged 55 and up are the fastest growing Facebook demographic in the USA
26. Facebook makes money through advertising  and virtual products
27. This year Facebook is  on track to generate sales of over $1 billion
28. In Australia court notices can be served through Facebook
29. A Facebook court summons in Australia is considered legally binding
30. Facebook has become so popular psychologists identified a new mental health disorder “Facebook Addiction Disorder”