Biz Stone didn't disclose the actual sum rumored to be at $100 million

Sep 26, 2009 09:02 GMT  ·  By

Several reports came in yesterday claiming the popular microblogging service Twitter was about to receive a massive amount of money in a new round of funding. The transaction has now been confirmed by Twitter's cofounder Biz Stone himself acting as usual as the company's public voice. The sum was speculated to be at around $100 million though Stone declined to reveal any actual figures.

“Yesterday we closed a significant round of funding with a group of investment firms that we're excited to publicly thank: Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Morgan Stanley,” Biz Stone wrote on the Twitter blog.

“It was important to us that we find investment partners who share our vision for building a company of enduring value. Twitter's journey has just begun and we are committed to building the best product, technology, and company possible. I'm proud of the team we've built so far and I'm confident in the future we'll build together.”

Twitter is now one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley and investors have been flocking to own a piece of the microblogging phenomenon despite failing to generate any revenue so far. Not that there's an actual need to make any money with the amount of funding the company has raised so far. Twitter had already managed to attract $55 million in investor money, the last round closing in February for $35 million. At the time Twitter was valued at $250 million but this latest round is said to value the company at $1 billion, a four-fold increase in its worth in about seven months.

Yet, despite having spent only $25 million so far, the company decided to get some additional funding in preparation for future growth as Twitter has its sights set on some very ambitious goals. For starters it wants to catch up to Facebook, no small feat considering it is now 10 times smaller than the social network, but in the long run it wants to reach 1 billion users, a rather lofty goal which is actually shared by Facebook.