As you may remember, two months ago eBay was planning to spin Skype into an independent company. The buyers who would take control of Skype from eBay included Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Index Ventures, and Silver Lake. However the founders of Skype interrupted the sale by claiming intellectual property infringement on the VoIP technology. The original founders of Skype started a company called Joltid. And Joltid said that they were suing eBay.

The lawsuit has now been settled. eBay will be selling a majority ownership of Skype to the aforementioned investors for $2 billion. Joltid will be licensing the technology to the new Skype buyers. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis will get 14% ownership in Skype as a result. Both Friis and Zennstrom will also make a “significant’ investment in Skype too. eBay will retain 30% in Skype and the rest of the investor group will get 56%.

Friis and Zennstrom also filed a lawsuit back in September against former Joost CEO Mike Volpi. Friis and Zennstrom founded Joost several years ago and sued Volpi because of breach of fiduciary duty. Volpi is currently a partner with Index Ventures which is one of the companies buying Skype. As a result, Index Ventures is no longer one of the buyers in Skype. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of this year.

At the beginning of the month, eBay announced that they would be selling Skype to several buyers. The buyers included Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. That sale has been interrupted not by Kanye West, but by the founders of Joost and Skype.

The founders of Joost and Skype started another company called Joltid. Joltid is suing eBay on the basis that Skype is infringing on their technology at least $100,000 times per day. eBay denies the allegations. But Joltid co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom says that their company holds the intellectual property rights to VoIP applications including Skype. Joltid filed the lawsuit against eBay two weeks after the announcement was made that Skype would be sold to the aforementioned buyers.

Today another lawsuit was filed by the Joltid, Skype, and Joost co-founders. Zennstrom and Friis filed a lawsuit against former Joost CEO and Chairman Mike Volpi along with venture capital firm Index Ventures. The lawsuit states that there has been a breach of “fiduciary duty against Volpi, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against Index, interference with prospective business advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract against Index, breach of confidence, and civil conspiracy.” Volpi had recently quit Joost to join Index Ventures back in July.

Between Index being sued and wanting to buy Skype from eBay, that company is up the creek made out of you know what with no oar. I also think it is safe to say that Friis and and Zennström don’t want to see Index own the company that they built and sold to eBay. Who knows? Maybe the purchase of Skype might be too much of a headache and might the transaction may be aborted. But all the buyers involved have already come to far and won’t go down without a fight.

About four years after eBay acquired Skype for about $4.1 billion, $2.6 billion of which was upfront cash, the company has decided to sell a big chunk of it it off to several investors.  Skype was valuated at $2.75 billion when eBay decided to sell 65% worth of the company to investors such as Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

eBay will receive about $1.9 billion cash when the deal is complete along with a $125 million note in principal from the buyers.  eBay itself will retain 35% in Skype.  The transaction is expected to be complete by the fourt quarter of this year.

“This is a great deal, unlocking both immediate and long-term value for eBay and tremendous potential for Skype,” stated eBay President and CEO John Donahoe in a press release. “We’ve acted decisively on a deal that delivers a high valuation, gives us significant cash up-front and lets us retain a meaningful minority stake with talented partners. Skype is a strong standalone business, but it does not have synergies with our e-commerce and online payments businesses. As a separate company, we believe that Skype will have the focus required to compete effectively in online voice and video communications and accelerate its growth momentum.”

Back in April, eBay said that they were planning on spinning Skype into its own brand and preparing a separate IPO for the VoIP company.  Now it is assumed these investors that took control of Skype will work together in preparing the IPO.  This gives eBay the ability to focus all of their energy on their own company and on PayPal.

How much money does Skype make?
In 2008, Skype itself made $551 million in revenue which was a 44% increase from the year before.  eBay’s total revenues for 2008 was $8.5 billion.

How many users does Skype have?
By EOY 2008, Skype had about 405 million users which was a 47% increase from the year before.

Several investors are considering making a bid on Skype, the voice-over-IP service owned by eBay.  eBay bought out Skype for about $4.1 billion in September 2005 but failed to find a real way to integrate the service into their system.

Some of the investors considering making a bid includes Andreesen Horowitz and Index Ventures.  Index Ventures was one of the early investors in Skype.  There is also rumored to be another multi-billion dollar private equity company involved according to TechCrunch.

At one point eBay was considering having Skype have their own IPO.  It is unclear whether the current Skype CEO Josh Silverman will still be involved if an acquisition does take place.  While Silverman was running Skype, the company grew to $551 million in revenue this year.  By 2011, eBay expects Skype to hit about $1 billion in revenues.

Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis both started Skype together shortly after KaZaa.  If Skype gets acquired, then the private equity companies and investors would probably work towards an IPO.

Social network customization service Ning.com has raised $15 million in Series E funding.  This investment places Ning at a valuation of $750 million.  Last year Ning raised $60 million at a $500 million valuation.

Ning currently has about 29.3 million registered users and over 1 million social networks.  The company was founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini.  Andreessen recently launched his own venture firm with former partner Ben Horowitz.  The venture firm that was started by Andreessen is called Andreessen Horowitz.

“The growth at Ning has been massive in the last year and, combined with the quality of the team and seeing that kind of momentum, it worked out well for us both,” stated Lightspeed Venture Partner Managing Director and co-founder Ravi Mhatre.

[via AllThingsD]

Last month Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have been able to raise $300 million in funding for their new venture capital firm called Andreessen Horowitz.  Yesterday Marc announced the launch of the VC firm on his personal blog.

The VC firm will have the ability to invest between $50,000 and $50 million in a company depending on the stage and opportunity.  The firm plans to aggressively invest in startups that will often times involve thousands of dollars.  Ben and Marc will be General Partners in the firm starting out.  In investments that involve $5 million or more, Ben or Marc will most likely join the Board of Directors.

Marc and Ben believe that the CEO of a company should be one of the founders.  The firm also believes that the product should be the heart of any technology company.  Most companies get built around the product.  The firm will focus on investments centered around consumer Internet, business Internet, mobile software, application software, networking, storage, etc.  The company will unlikely be involved in green and clean tech, space elevators, electric cars, or movie production studios.