Query website Quora gathers $50 million in funding
updated 02:30 am EDT, Tue May 15, 2012
$61 million total gathered in two rounds
Peter Thiel and his Northbridge Venture Partners fund have injected $50 million into Quora, the crowd-sourced question and answer website. During the initial funding the company was valued at $86 million. Now, Quora is valued at $400 million following this round of funding. No financial plan for growth has been publicly announced for the second round of funding.
No announcement has been made as far as the company going public, but Quora, along with Airbnb and Dropbox have been named amongst the next generation of multi-billion dollar start-up companies by The New York Times. Including this round of funding, Quora has generated $61 million in venture capital, with an initial $11 million investment by Benchmark Capital.
Former Facebook employee and co-founder Adam D'Angelo put $20 million of his own funds into the startup. Silicon Valley has seen a return to venture capitalism for Internet startups not seen since the late 90s. Instagram, which has yet to turn a profit, was purchased for $1 billion by Facebook, and both Amazon and Google are rumored to be in the market to acquire Pinterest. This round of venture capitalism for Quora infuses a great deal of liquid capital into a company that has very little in the way of expenses and an unclear reason for the $400 million current valuation.
