Huffington Post Nabs $25 Million in Funding

From All Things Digital, Dec. 1, 2008:

A BoomTown Interview with Oak Investment’s Fred Harman

The Huffington Post will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round by Oak, which was led by Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blog site a valuation of just “south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“There is an inevitable shift from offline to online with people increasingly getting their news media online, and this election proved how powerful the Huffington Post could be,” said Harman, in an interview with BoomTown. “And I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site.”

Indeed, the Huffington Post–which is now billing itself as ‘”The Internet Newspaper”–has been hitting on all cylinders during the current election season.

And it hopes to continue building that momentum into the Obama administration, which will give the liberal-leaning site a lot of advantages in coverage.

The Huffington Post has also become a powerful news aggregator, much as the more conservative Drudge Report has, sending traffic all over the Web from its site by linking with a variety of online sites. It also has a strong offering of high-profile bloggers.

But the site’s leaders are also hoping its traffic strength will allow it to be as strong in arenas outside of its flagship political arena, including in business, local, “green” and investigative news.

It will also use the money to make acquisitions, the company said in a press release about the funding, which it put out this morning.

It’s certainly a long way from May of 2005, when its high-profile Co-Founder Arianna Huffington was roundly mocked for launching the site. Today, she has seen her power grow as the site’s traffic and influence has.

The site’s namesake operates out of her California-based office in Los Angeles, while the company has its HQ in New York.

For the full story, see the jump.

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