I’ll start with the big stuff: Automattic is raising $160M, all primary, and it’s the first investment into the company since 2008. This is obviously a lot of money, especially considering everything we’ve done so far has been built on only about $12M of outside capital over the past 8 years. It was also only a year ago I said “Automattic is healthy, generating cash, and already growing as fast as it can so there’s no need for the company to raise money directly — we’re not capital constrained.”
I was wrong, but I didn’t realize it until I took on the CEO role in January. Things were and are going well, but there was an opportunity cost to how we were managing the company toward break-even, and we realized we could invest more into WordPress and our products to grow faster. Also our cash position wasn’t going to be terribly strong especially after a number of infrastructure and product investments this and last year. So part of my 100-day plan as CEO was to figure out what new funding could look like and we found a great set of partners who believe in our vision for how the web should be and how we can scale into the opportunity ahead of us, though it ended up taking 110 days until the first close. (Our other main areas of focus have been improving mobile, a new version of WP.com, and Jetpack.)
This Series C round was led by Deven Parekh of Insight Venture Partners, and included new investors Chris Sacca, Endurance, and a special vehicle True Ventures created to step up their investment, alongside our existing secondary investors from last year, Tiger and Iconiq. (There is a second close soon so this list might change a bit.) There was interest significantly above what we raised, but we focused in on finding the best partners and scaled it back to be the right amount of capital at the right valuation. Deven and Insight share our long term vision and are focused on building an enduring business, one that will thrive for decades to come.
WordPress is in a market as competitive as it has ever been, especially on the proprietary and closed side. I believe WordPress will win, first and foremost, because of its community — the hundreds of core developers and large commercial companies, the tens of thousands of plugin and theme developers, and the millions of people who build beautiful things with WordPress every day. Automattic is here to support that community and invest the full strength of our resources to making WordPress a better product every day, bringing us closer to our shared mission of democratizing publishing. But a majority of the web isn’t on an open platform yet, and we have a lot of work ahead of us. Back to it!
You can read more about the news by Kara and Liz on Recode: WordPress.com Parent Automattic Has Raised $160 Million, Now Valued at $1.16 Billion Post-Money, on Techmeme, and on the Wall Street Journal.
48 replies on “New Funding for Automattic”
[…] Here are the official details from our CEO, Matt Mullenweg: […]
[…] And here’s the official post about it from Matt. […]
[…] is out both on our founder Matt Mullenweg’s blog and on Re/code that Automattic has raised $160 million of new capital. I’m really excited […]
[…] WordPress her ne kadar açık kaynaklı bir yazılım olsa da arkasında WordPress.com başta olmak üzere bunu hizmet olarak sunan ve gelişmeye yön veren bir şirket var. WordPress’in kurucusu Matt Mullenweg’in geçtiğimiz Haziran ayında CEO’luk koltuğuna oturduğu Automattic, 160 milyon dolar yatırım aldığını duyurdu. […]
[…] is now valued at $1.16 billion thanks to a new $160 million funding round today. This news follows reports last month which estimated that Automattic was out […]
[…] Also notable, EIG (the company behind HostGator, Bluehost, and scores of others) is part of this funding round. Matt details the full list of participants on his post about the fundraising. […]
[…] the company at $1 billion or more. On Monday, Automattic CEO and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg confirmed that the company has done exactly that — raising a $160-million round led by Insight Partners that values the […]
WPress on, Matt!
[…] to a blog post by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, the round was led by Insight Venture Partners and included […]
[…] the company behind WordPress.com and the open-source WordPress platform, today announced that it has raised a $160 million Series C round from Insight Ventures, True Ventures, Chris Sacca, […]
Very cool.
This is a fact and dilemma that most of us business owners face:
How do you feel this will change Automattic operations (other than more hiring), or do you anticipate that this funding will fuel growth by leveraging the existing capabilities?
It largely looks like what we’re doing but faster, with more people, across more geographies, and better infrastructure.
Congrats Matt. You make us proud of being part of the WordPress community!
[…] announcement was officially made by Matt Mullenweg on his official blog post and he revealed that this C series funding was led by Insight […]
[…] WordPress, has raised $160 million in venture funding, company CEO Matt Mullenweg disclosed in a blog post. The new investments, which are being led by Insight Ventures, value the company at $1.16 billion, […]
[…] New Funding for Automattic, ma.tt […]
Congrats, Matt, great news. Future looks extremely bright!!
[…] the New Funding for Automattic by Matt […]
[…] via New Funding for Automattic | Matt Mullenweg. […]
I wish there were some way to buy stock in WordPress. It would be the first tech stock I would ever invest in!
[…] [Source: Recode/Matt's Blog] […]
[…] morning Automattic’s founder, Matt Mullenweg, announced that the company is raising $160M in new funding. After taking the helm as CEO earlier this year, […]
[…] WordPress.comとオープンソースのWordpressプラットホームを抱えるAutomatticが今日(米国時間5/5)、Insight VenturesやTrue Ventures、Chris Sacca、Endurance、Tiger Global Management、IconiqなどからシリーズCで1億6000万ドルを調達した、と発表した。 […]
Fantastic! Congrats on this major step to growth, you must be totally proud Matt. Power to the WordPress!
[…] The funding comes from a range of investors, which include Insight Venture Partners, and the news was announced by the company’s CEO Matt Mullenweg. […]
[…] WordPress, vient d’opérer une levée de fonds de 160 millions de dollars, comme le confirmait sur son blog son PDG Matt Mullenweg lundi 5 mai. Dans son billet, il explique pourquoi il a décidé de […]
[…] Mullenweg, who took over as CEO of Automattic at the beginning of this year, mentioned in a blog post that he iin the beginning didn’t think the company will require to raise additional funds, […]
[…] o pomyślnej rundzie finansowania podał na swoim blogu Matt Mullenweg, który zawsze był jedną z głównych postaci w środowisku WordPressa, […]
[…] en el blog de Mullnweng se precisa que la empresa que controla el 22% de los sitios web de la red busca seguir creciendo. […]
[…] has raised $ 160 million in venture funding, company CEO Matt Mullenweg disclosed in a blog post. The new investments, which are being led by Insight Ventures, value the company at $ 1.16 billion, […]
[…] Matt Mullenweg betonte dabei in einem Blog-Eintrag, dass es die erste Finanzierung seit einer 12 Millionen Dollar Investition im Jahr 2008 sei. […]
[…] Happy to announce our big funding news and more from Matt’s post. […]
[…] https://ma.tt/2014/05/new-funding-for-automattic/ […]
[…] the company behind the WordPress blogging platform, has raised $160 million in a Series C funding round, valuing the company at a reported $1.16 billion. The […]
[…] detalles a través del artículo realizado por el propio fundador de WordPress Matt Mullenweg. Una ronda de financiación que ayudará a la empresa a mejorar su estrategia para […]
[…] Management,and Iconiq. In a post about the funding, company cofounder and CEO Matt Mullenweg writes that, “This is obviously a lot of money, especially considering everything we’ve done so far […]
Congrats to everyone on the team who helped make it happen. We end users may not always articulate our appreciation for what you do, but we do know and understand the amount of work you put in to make this the best platform today. Thanks!
[…] for the company to raise money directly — we’re not capital constrained,’” said Mullenweg, CEO, Automattic in his blog […]
Keep up the good work!
[…] forward to 2014, Matt Mullenweg announced that Automattic was in the process of raising $160M, the first investment into the company since […]
[…] actually been a particularly big year. Probably the headliner happened only a week ago; Automattic raised $160 million, on a valuation of $1 billion. That’s a lot of money. That’s a large valuation, and it […]
[…] שאני עובד בה הודיעה בשבוע שעבר על גיוס של 160 מיליון דולר, לפי שווי של למעלה […]
Money is a good means to a end. Congrats!
Any chance we’ll see some social media style functionality in future wordpress releases? Would love to move off of facebook and the like and host all my content myself on my own Wordress install. But to do that I need to have friends lists and the ability to create friends groups so I can lock down content for only group A or only group B to see. Something easy where friends don’t have to register for my site first. Some kind of feed page to see all my friends posts would also be nice and a great use of the Admin CP main page.
WordPress is really amazing and all thanks goes to MATT for his dedication to this.
[…] Read the official announcement on Matt Mullenweg’s blog. […]
Thanks matt providing such wonderful platform.
It’s amazing to see the growth that WordPress had in the past year and it’s undoubtedly among the most popular CMS out there. But I still wonder if one day CMS like WordPress will be able to compete with CMS in the style of Liferay.
I love you WordPress | seni çok seviyorum wordpress 🙂 thanks Matt