In the middle of an economic crisis, LinkedIn has sealed a new round of funding for $22.7 million from SAP Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and McGraw-Hill, according to the Wall Street Journal. This round of funding includes cash from strategic partners and not just venture companies. According to the Wall Street Journal, this round was actually part of the Series-D which was first announced in June.
That leaves the company valued at $1 billion, a far cry from the $15 billion valuation Facebook was able to attract. According to the latest Nielsen ratings released today, LinkedIn has a quarter of the domestic growth that Facebook has and is growing at a much faster rate. According to Dan Nye, who spoke with Techcrunch, the company has been profitable since 2006.
Why would they want this money now? Well they might as well have a nice stash of cash in order to weather the economic downturn. Is the company firing anybody at the company? It doesn’t look like it but the Wall Street Journal has said that the company has definitely slowed down its hiring. Then again, would the company really announced that it’s actively hiring in the face of the recent firing announcements?
For those companies that are cash heavy, this period could turn out to be pretty valuable as they snatch up new employees and potentially entire companies through acquisitions. This is a sizeable round to follow-up from the $53 million raised a few months ago. Looks like we can bet on LinkedIn being around once this economy works through all its issues!
