WordPress.com Creator Automattic Raises $160 Million

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Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, which just raised $160 million.

Image: Flickr, Silicon Prairie News

By Seth Fiegerman2014-05-05 16:27:21 UTC

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, confirmed Monday that it has raised $160 million at a more than $1 billion valuation.

The large Series C funding round was led by Insight Ventures with participation from investors Chris Sacca, Tiger Global Management and others. Re/code, which was first to break the funding news, reports that the round values Automattic at $1.16 billion.

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Matt Mullenweg, who took over as CEO of Automattic at the beginning of this year, noted in a blog post that he initially didn't think the company needed to raise additional funds, but changed his opinion after becoming CEO.

"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," Mullenweg wrote in the post. "Also our cash position wasn’t going to be terribly strong especially after a number of infrastructure and product investments this and last year."

The funding comes at a time when other website and blogging platforms are raising significant rounds. Squarespace recently raised $40 million and Weebly raised $35 million.

"WordPress is in a market as competitive as it has ever been, especially on the proprietary and closed side," Mullenweg wrote in the blog post. "I believe WordPress will win."

WordPress blogs are read by more than 400 million people each month and users create more than 40 million new blog posts each month. Automattic has also made a couple notable acquisitions this year to strengthen its platform, including buying Longreads, which curates longer stories from around the web.

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Topics: automattic, Business, funding, Startups, WordPress