Twitter raises ‘significant’ round of funding

Reporting from San Francisco — Twitter Inc. doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to offer its shares to the public. Instead it has raised another round of funding from some very deep-pocketed and plugged-in private investors.

The San Francisco company acknowledged a “significant” round of funding from preexisting investors and new investor Digital Sky Technologies, the investment engine run by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. Milner has significant stakes in social networking’s hottest companies, including Facebook Inc.

People familiar with the funding peg it at $800 million, which would make Twitter worth $8 billion. In December, Twitter raised $200 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and other firms in a deal that valued the company at $3.7 billion.

The investment, which shows how hot the demand is for a stake in the top social networking companies, had been speculated for months. It has become a winning strategy for Milner to help more mature companies raise money to cash out employees and buy time before an initial public offering, when Twitter will have to prove it has a powerful business model. Twitter is on track to generate $150 million in advertising revenue this year, according to research firm EMarketer.

In a blog post, Twitter said: “We will use these resources to aggressively innovate, hire more great people and invest in international expansion.”

In a statement released by Twitter, Milner said: “Twitter’s astonishing growth is a testament to how important it is becoming to more people every day, and why we couldn’t pass up the chance to be a bigger part of its future.”

Twitter also tweeted that it has opened a New York office.

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