Automattic, the 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 so far grown by sipping daintily on a $1.2 million first round secured in 2006. I can’t wait to see what is next. Really interesting to me is that with this round the New York Times joins their investors. One word for that: adaptation. The line between old media and new media blurs further.
32 thoughts on “Automattic secures $29.5 million B round”
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Mark on WordPress 
Wow, that’s fantastic! Can’t wait to see what continues to happen with WordPress! It’s already a fantastic blogging platform. With solid funding, the sky is the limit!!
Well..call it the “crunchy” effect – WP just won the Crunchie award and now they landed up with $29.5mn!
Fun aside, I am surprised with the amount of funding..this surely means something big is in making.
All the best to automattic chaps!
Cool, this should be a really good sign for things to come in the near future. WordPress will progress well.
Hows does the investment work? Does it mean they have a share in WordPress? Do they get a part of the revenue or something? Do they get a share when you go to sell it or something? It doesn’t really make sense that someone hands over just under 30mil, unless they are getting a big fat portion or somehting?
nuggetbro, no one can buy a share in WordPress(.org), it’s a non-profit thing. Investors invested in Automattic, which is a company just like any company. Automattic runs WordPress.com, which is one of the many sites that offer a hosted version of WordPress using WordPress MU. Like George Foreman’s kids are all named George, all the children of WordPress are also named WordPress.
Please, please, please stay independent.
All that money is great and will finance some brilliant innovation, I’m sure. But I really hope this doesn’t lead to an acquisition by a big media company. That sort of consolidation inevitably ruins the free spirit and creativity of companies like WordPress.
With that caveat, best of luck to you.
Just came by from Om’s site,
The stats are truly frightening. Did not realise lil ol automattic is now a hydra, growing exponentially year on year.
Congrats! I hope this will create more chances for more improvements to the platform and services like Akismet/stats to benefit us end users even more.
@News Corpse: I agree with that, but Matt already answered my fears a while ago … apparently the licensing pretty much says we have nothing to worry about. Though the paranoia in me shakes in fear!
Glad you guys have some financing behind all your efforts! I can’t wait to see how it will all work out!
Excellent. The influx of cash should help WP in areas that need it like standardized plugins, simple upgrade process and more solid admin area. Love the WP – and it’ll be nice to see things raise to that next level. Cheers!
Can you create, with all this new money, a REALLY easy way to upload a photo onto the blog site? Like, one easy press this button, bzong, there it is. this is not intuitive to me now ( geek-head minus a g-zillion)
Thanks Mark!
Thats good news for everyone! I wonder if Automattic has considered doing an IPO? Would being a publicly traded company be a bad thing?
The snowball is just getting bigger and bigger 🙂 Congrats to wordpress
@Don – can a non-profit be publicly traded? I thought you had to be a corp or something … a for profit jingo.
Well that sure is amazing – congrats!
The only worry I have is the amount of influence that the money men might have on future directions. Such a large amount of money would suggest they have a lot to lose, and will want to protect their investment.
Congrats Automattic 🙂
We are using WordPress for all our blogs. It’s a greate software. I hope they will add more features and keep it free!
USA Colleges, even basic* .com services are not free long ago — Automattic Inc. serves google ads quietly placing it on the content generated by its userbase.
call it ‘ad-sponsored’ or whatever, just not “free”.
.
*) custom CSS or domain forwarding are the *paid* upgrade features.
That is quite impresive number, I also congrates to Automatic.
WOW!!! well done everyone and keep up the good work!!! Im hoping to see more excellent software soon!!
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