A consortium of investors that are being led by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Silver Lake are submitting a plan to buy a minority stake in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). TPG Capital is another company that will be making a proposal for Yahoo! Both of these proposals would lead to taking a stake of around 20% of the company.
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Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) recently fired CEO Carol Bartz. To explain the decision made by the board, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang sent out a memo to employees explaining what has been happening at the company. The memo indicates that Yahoo! hired Allen & Company to field “inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options.” Below is the memo:
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Ning has recently been shopping around themselves for roughly $150 million according to sources with AllThingsD. Ning, co-founded by Marc Andreessen, gave a pitch to Google, Groupon, and several private equity companies.
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Beyond Oblivion has raised $77 million in funding in a round led by News Corp and Wellcome Trust. Beyond Oblivion is a digital music discovery service that launched in 2011.
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Personal has raised $7.6 million in Series A funding from Grotech Ventures, Revolution LLC, Allen & Company, and Eric Semler. Personal is a company that wants to give Internet users power over what kind of information they give away. It helps users prevent companies from tracking them. Personal is currently in private beta. [TechCrunch]
Group coupon service Groupon.com has completed its $950 million series G round of funding. The best part is the press release title: “Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars.” I’ve pasted the press release below. The investors in this round include Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Allen & Company LLC acted as financial advisor. The previous funding rounds was led by New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group (formerly DST).
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Gather.com, a news website run by freelancers has raised $2.4 million in funding. Every month, Gather.com freelancers write over 8,000 articles. They receive about 7 million visitors per month. The company plans to use the funding to create an on-demand platform for publishers in a model that is similar to Demand Media. Gather currently works with writers that submit content and share revenue based on pageviews and engagement.
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ConnectEDU is a college and career planning service that is based in Boston, Mass. The company has raised $7 million in funding led by Allen & Co. Margaret Spellings, former Secretary of Education under President George W. Bush joined the ConnectEDU board of directors as well. ConnectEDU plans to establish regional service centers throughout the U.S. as part of the funding.
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