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Published February 13, 2009 at 4:31 PM
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 Twitter Inc. has raised $35 million from new investors Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital. The Series C included additional undisclosed contributions from existing investors, such as Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. The total raised to date is reportedly $55 million. Other Twitter backers include angels Ron Conway, Mike Maples Jr. and Chris Sacca and Betaworks. Benchmark's Peter Fenton is joining Twitter's board.
Describing the round as an "offer we couldn't refuse," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone reveals in a blog post that the San Francisco startup wasn't seeking funding. After all, the company's latest round, led by Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions, was only announced in June.
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Much has been made of the fact that even though Twitter has been gaining in popularity, it still lacks revenue streams. And yet investors remain bullish.
"Most people don't realize the actual scale of Twitter," IVP general partner Todd Chaffee tells The Deal. "It already has millions of users and thousands of applications that have been built upon its platform, and the company is less than three years old. It's rare to find a company with such rapid growth, and the business is starting to accelerate now that they have hit the inflection point in their growth curve."
Now all Twitter needs to do is start making money. As Stone blogs, "We are now positioned extremely well to support the accelerating growth of our service, further enable the robust ecosystem sprouting up around Twitter, and yes, to begin building revenue-generating products." - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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