14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has just closed a huge new round of funding, reportedly bringing in $200 million at a $3.7 billion valuation. The funding should come in handy as the company is expanding more into revenue generation. The round is lead by Kleiner Perkins with other venture capital firms contributing. Twitter is also adding two new board members. The company has confirmed the round, but would not specify any financial details.
"As part of a significant new round of funding with investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and existing investors, we've added two new members to Twitter's board of directors," new Twitter CEO Dick Costolo announced.
"Please join us in welcoming Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt. The experience these new directors bring to Twitter, along with this renewed investment, will help us continue to grow as a company and business," he added.
Mike McCue is the current CEO of Flipboard, the company behind one of the most popular iPad apps, which incidentally just got a bit update. David Rosenblatt is the former CEO of the now Google-owned DoubleClick.
While Twitter would not disclose the sums involved, All Things D says the company got a hefty bump in valuation since its last round which valued the company at $1 billion. In total, Twitter has raised some $360 million to date.
Kleiner Perkins pushed out the Russian DST in the race to bear the grunt of the latest funding round. The Russian firm specializes in this type of late stage investments.
Costolo took the opportunity to highlight some of the big numbers for 2010, which indicate that the site is still growing, despite a seeming slowdown.
"In the past 12 months, Twitter users sent an astonishing 25 billion Tweets and we added more than 100 million new registered accounts. In that time, our team has grown from 130 people to more than 350 today," he said.