Groupon has reportedly closed a new round of funding at $950 million. According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch, who cites "a source with knowledge of the financing," Groupon is now valued at $4.57 billion.  Update: Arrington is now saying they have only closed half of that funding. 

That number will likely continue to rise for the foreseeable future, as Groupon appears to be the hot ticket item heading into the New Year. The company of course turned down an alleged $6 billion offer from Google recently. 

Groupon still has plenty of expanding to do too, in a geographical sense. Groupon, which seemingly expands into new areas just about every day, is headed for the Australian market. The Sydney Morning Herald confirmed this with the company. The publication reports:

The company is recruiting people to sign up to its email database before a launch next month into a market that is becoming crowded. The No. 2 player, Living Social, abandoned plans to start from scratch in Australia, opting instead for a joint venture with an existing company, Jumponit.

But because an existing Australian deals company has had its application to use the Groupon name in Australia approved, the Chicago company has been forced to use the domain name of Stardeals in Australia.

Names aside, Groupon is striving to do for local businesses what Amazon did for buying products. This is essentially what Groupon CEO Andrew Mason told Charlie Rose in a recent interview. He also said Groupon is the savior for small businesses. 

According to Mason, Groupon is adding about 40 cities a month in 35 countries, has over 40 million subscribers. It’s been a couple weeks since he revealed these numbers though. They could be significantly higher by now.