Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Facebook Gets $200M From Eastern European Investor

Palo Alto-based Facebook announced a few minutes ago that it has received a $200M investment, from Digital Sky Technologies, an investors in Eastern European and Russian internet businesses. According to Facebook, the investment in its preferred stock gives it a $10 billion valuation, and represented 1.96 percent of its equity. Facebook said that part of the investment would go to purchase at least $100M in Facebook common stock from existing stockholders--which will provide liquidity to both current and former employees. Digital Sky is run by former Mail.ru CEO Yuri Milner, Gregory Finger, formerly of hedge fund NCH, and Alexander Tamas, formerly at Goldman Sachs's EMEA Investment Banking Division.