Huffington Post Gets $25 Million for New Initiatives

Huffington Post Gets $25 Million for New Initiatives
By E&P Staff
Published: December 01, 2008

The Huffington Post, which this year became one of the most popular online news outlets (as ranked by Nielsen) today announced that it has secured $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California.

As statement from the news/opinion site said it would "invest in its technology and infrastructure, increase its in-house advertising capabilities, and continue to expand its content offerings -- including a new investigative journalism initiative and a rollout of local versions of The Huffington Post in select cities." The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, co-founders of The Huffington Post. An Oak Investment representative will now join the five-person board.

"This commitment from Oak Investment Partners will allow us to accelerate our growth, with more verticals, more video, more citizen journalism initiatives, more cities for our local editions, and a fund for
investigative journalism," said Huffington in a statement.

Lerer commented: "We are thrilled to bring on board a partner like Oak to work with Softbank Capital and Greycroft as we move forward....The additional capital from Oak will enable us to go full-steam ahead with operations and select acquisitions."

Fred Harman, general partner at Oak Investment Partners, said, "Much of the news media business needs to be reassembled online around an ad-supported model and the timetable for this has been accelerated, not slowed, by this economic down cycle. We believe that The Huffington Post has built a platform and business model to be among the leaders in aggregating this audience online. Our financing will provide the resources necessary to scale the company, both organically as well as through acquisitions of additional talent and new media companies."