Facebook clinches another $100 million
May 11th, 2008 | by Jose Miguel Cansado |
Without a clear (public) business case, the latest king of the social networks is raising $100 million, according to Business Week’s FaceBook: Friends with Money, and also echoed by TechCrunch.
Here is some interesting data from the Business Week article:
- Facebook already raised $360m in last seven months: $240m from Microsoft for a 1.6% stake, and $120m from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing
- Facebook CFO Gideon Yu, former CFO of YouTube and treasurer at Yahoo, says “It will be used entirely for servers“
- The $100m is a loan from TriplePoint, not capital
- In March Facebook had 35 million users in US, 71% YoY growth
- Worldwide number of users tripled to 109.2 million, opening sites in Spanish, German and French
- Analysts estimate Facebook has 10,000 servers. The new funds could buy 50,000 servers more
- Google is estimated to buy 500,000 servers a year, and Microsoft 200,000
My conclusions:
- These are good news for server vendors: IBM, HP, Sun, Dell and Rackable System (the latter known to be a supplier of Facebook)
- Who said that barriers of entry for Internet business were too low? You’d better get a good CFO before you try to build your Data Center.
- Facebook CFO admits that it is easier and better to raise money when you are not in a hurry… and when the VC are still hot on Social Networks!
Good luck.
