WebProNews

NYT joins other Automattic investors in 2nd funding round

The popular blogging platform drew a sizable investment from The New York Times Company, which expanded its minority stake in WordPress parent Automattic.

Now we know why Matt Mullenweg could be so generous with the added storage at WordPress. His company received its second round of venture funding as the Times joined existing investors in pumping up Automattic's coffers.

"Automattic is now positioned to execute on our vision of a better web not just in blogging, but expanding our investment in anti-spam, identity, wikis, forums, and more - small, open source pieces, loosely joined with the same approach and philosophy that has brought us this far," Mullenweg said on his blog.

Om Malik noted some of the investment round would be used to give Automattic's founders and other senior management types the chance to cash in some of their holdings. Doing so gives those folks motivation to stick around until the bigger payday arrives.

WordPress has an impressive collection of companies using its platform for blogging, including the Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and other big media properties.

Automattic CEO Toni Schneider said this round of financing helps the company achieve a couple of goals: financial security, and the further development of other products like the Akismet spam filter.