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Web 2.0 - Wednesday, January 23, 2008

WordPress' Automattic Clears $29.5M Round With NY Times

Matt Mullenweg, Toni Schneider and their small band of coders at Automattic are an impressive bunch. They took on Google, Six Apart and others in building the world's best Web publishing platform and so far have prevailed.

Automattic, which brought the WordPress blog platform to the world, has now raised $29.5M in Series B funding. The New York Times Co. joined the round which was led by return backer Polaris Venture Partners (which put in $20M in the round) as well as Radar Ventures and True Ventures. Automattic received $1.1M in financing about two years ago. The New York Times says that in the latest round it invested the smallest amount.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Automattic got a bid late last year from a potential buyer but declined to name the larger Internet company that made the buyout bid. That offer valued Automattic at $150M-$200M and helped prompt the new round of financing. The Journal also reports that some of the $29M will be used to help company founders and others cash out some of their holdings.

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