Last March, Jeff Bezos and other investors who put money into Business Insider thought the news site was worth $100 million.
Investors Think Business Insider Doubled Its Value in Less Than a Year
Business Insider could be Germany-bound.
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Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
Now they think it’s twice as valuable. Sources say Business Insider’s newest funding round, led by German publisher Axel Springer, pegs the company’s value at $200 million*. Business Insider’s backers invested $25 million in this round, which means the company has raised more than $55 million since 2007.
The company won’t comment on its valuation or financials, but a person familiar with Business Insider said it generated $30 million in revenue last year, up from around $18 million in 2013.
For context: Lots of digital publishers are raising lots of money! Last summer Vice raised $500 million in a round that valued the company at $2.5 billion, and BuzzFeed raised $50 million at an $850 million valuation. Last fall Vox Media raised $46.5 million in a round that valued that company at $380 million. Oh! And Mashable just raised $17 million as well. No word on that valuation.
Business Insider says it will use the new money to grow in the U.S. and internationally. Last year, the company launched a U.K. edition, and people familiar with the company expect it to look at a German version, likely in conjunction with Axel Springer. The German publisher is already in a joint venture with Washington, D.C.-based Politico and plans to launch a European version of Politico this spring.
Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget wouldn’t comment on the company’s valuation or financials. But he said the influx of cash into his company, and digital publishers in general, was easy to understand: “There’s no question in my mind that everything is going digital. And there’s no question in my mind that a bunch of companies have figured out a model that works.”
Blodget and I had a longer conversation about digital publishing, and his relationship with Amazon CEO Bezos, last fall. You can listen to that here.
* I used to work at Business Insider’s predecessor company, so I own a few of the company’s shares, and I hope it does well.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
