Groupon, which decided to raise more outside backing rather than take a reported $6 billion offer from Google (NSDQ: GOOG), has completed a $950 million funding round. An SEC filing late last year showed that the company had raised $500 million and might raise another $450 million as part of a funding round. Groupon now confirms that it has raised that maximum, saying in a release that it will use the $950 million total to “fuel global expansion, invest in technology, and provide liquidity for employees and early investors.”
The additional cash comes from a roster of big-name venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Existing backers Battery Ventures and Mail.ru Group also put more cash into the company. The valuation is a reported $4.75 billion, according to TechCrunch’s report.
Groupon had most recently raised a $135 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies (subsequently renamed Mail.ru) and Battery Ventures in April.
As my colleague Staci D. Kramer wrote last month, the staggering amount of cash is close to the amount of money Groupon boasts of saving users to date: now $984,486,672 over 22,737,388 deals. No company we cover has come close to raising a ten digit sum in a single round — ever.
Wonder how Groupon will use all of that money. They are already significantly ahead of the competition in terms of subscriber growth, marketshare, and geographic reach. It’s amazing that a simple concept that did not even exist just a few years ago now has such demand. There are literally hundreds of Groupon copycat / clone sites that exist. I started LocalDealSites.com as a guide to local deal a day sites and currently list over 130 Groupon-like daily deal websites… if you know of more, please send them to me via my site. http://www.localdealsites.com/