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Facebook gets $10 bn valuation, Russian investor puts in $200 mn

Indiantelevision.com Team

(27 May 2009 8:35 pm)

MUMBAI: Facebook has received a funding of $200 million from Russia's Digital Sky Technologies, placing the value of the social networking firm at $10 billion.

The Russian internet investor will get a 1.96 per cent stake in Facebook's preferred stock in lieu of the investment made. DST is also planning to buy at least $100 million of Facebook stock from current and former employees.

"A number of firms approached us, but DST stood out because of the global perspective they bring - backed up by the impressive growth and financial achievements of their internet investments. We're looking forward to working with the DST team," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement.

Though Facebook has announced many times that the company does not need extra coins, market speculations are that Facebook could use the money for funding its expansion operations. These include bandwidth, storage and engineering costs.

The deal with DST is Facebook's first big funding jab since 2007, when the company collected $240 million for a 1.6 per cent stake to value the company at $15 billion.