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BuzzFeed valued at $850m as company plans international expansion
BuzzFeed, the viral news and content website famed for its "listicles", has been valued at $850m after it secured $50m of investment from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The online media company currently reaches 150m people a month, has expanded from its New York base to offices in Los Angeles and London, and now has plans to set up shop in Berlin, Tokyo, Mumbai and Mexico City.
Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreesen said that the opportunity in front of BuzzFeed was “effectively unbounded”, while general partner Chris Dixon – who will now be joining the BuzzFeed board – described them as a future “preeminent media company”.
The $850m valuation, as reported by the New York Times, marks out BuzzFeed as a serious player within the media landscape. The Washington Post was purchased for a fraction of that price – $250m – by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos last year.
BuzzFeed was built off internet-savvy content using lists, memes and Gifs, yet in recent months it has shown a commitment to breaking original news stories and long-form articles, with expert reporters hired in the fields of politics, sport and business.
The company also announced a new organisational structure on their website today. Alongside plans for international expansion, the $50m investment will be used to help develop BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, which will aim to create video content varying from feature length films to shareable six second clips.
BuzzFeed Creative, which works on the company's branded content offerings, will be centralised into a team of 60 creatives and 15 video producers based in LA. A new division of the company called BuzzFeed Distributed has also been established, and will create content specifically for individual social media platforms.
The Silicon Valley-based Andreesen Horowitz has previously invested in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare and Skype.
Dixon wrote on a his blog:
BuzzFeed is a media company in the same sense that Tesla is a car company, Uber is a taxi company, or Netflix is a streaming movie company.Everything is built for mobile devices from the outset. Internet native formats like lists, tweets, pins, animated GIFs, etc. are treated as equals to older formats like photos, videos, and long form essays.BuzzFeed takes the internet and computer science seriously.
Meanwhile, chief executive Jonah Peretti tweeted his response to the news with a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of BuzzFeed’s social media savvy:
We did it for the tweetstorm, not the money
— Jonah Peretti (@peretti) August 11, 2014