Facebook's New Year gift - $500 million

New York, Jan 3: The phenomenal popularity of Facebook has driven the investments of global leading companies. Facebook has successfully raised $500 million in a recent round of funding from Goldman Sachs and Russia's Digital Sky Technologies (DST).

The popular social networking site is now worth $50 billion according to report from Dealbook. The new valuation puts Facebook far ahead than companies like Yahoo, e-Bay and Time Warner, in terms of investment.

The California based website company was launched in 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, who is the founder and chief Executive of the Facebook. Zuckerberg, built the social networking website Facebook.com, when he was 19-years-old. The monstrous growth of Facebook worldwide has made Zuckerberg one of the world's youngest billionaires.

Thats not all, the popularity has grabbed the eyeballs of the global investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs, that has invested $450 million. While DST a Moscow based Internet investment group, a majority owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, has invested a further $50 million in Facebook.

In May 2009, DST acquired approximately $200 million of Facebook stock. Sources said that Goldman Sachs is expected to raise as much as $1.5 billion from investors for Facebook at the $50 billion valuation.

OneIndia News