Media tracking website BuzzFeed secured $15.5m in series C financing on Monday from a pool of investors including corporate venturing units belonging to Japan-based conglomerate Softbank and media conglomerate Hearst Media.
Softbank Capital and Hearst Ventures were joined by venture capital (VC) firm New Enterprise Associates, which led the round, as well as venture firms RRE Ventures and Lerer Ventures.
Softbank and Hearst have been investors in BuzzFeed since its $3.5m series A round in July 2008, while additional backers include VC fund Founder Collective, and angel investors including chairman of the Huffington Post, Kenneth Lerer, and Ron Conway. Buzzfeed has now raised a total of $27m in capital.
Buzzfeed uses a technology base to track videos, images and links that are ‘going viral’ on the web, ie. picking up a great deal of attention through being shared online, and gains its revenue from social advertising.
The funding comes at a time when Buzzfeed, which claims to have tripled its traffic to 25 million unique users a month in the past year, is aiming to build on this model by expanding into original reporting. Buzzfeed launched a politics section last month to tie-in with the 2012 elections, and hired Ben Smith from US politics website Politico as editor-in-chief.
Jonah Peretti, chief executive officer of BuzzFeed, said: "The baton has been passed from print to the traditional web and now from the traditional web to social. The entire industry is shifting, and we intend to be the leader in social publishing."