Facebook Takes Out $100 Million Loan for Server Farms

May 9th, 2008

In an effort to fund the build-out of its server infrastructure around the world, Facebook has secured a $100 million loan from Menlo Park’s TriplePoint Capital, BusinessWeek’s Spencer Ante reports. The funding comes in the form of a loan, and no equity is involved. The company has raised over $360 million in venture capital in the last year - $240 million from ad partner Microsoft, and $120 million from Chinese billionaire Li Ka-Shing.

While Facebook’s 10,000 servers may seem small by comparison to Google’s and Microsoft’s hundreds of thousands, the company spent $11.5 million during the first quarter alone with server vendor Rackable Systems, representing 17% of Rackable’s total revenue. It recently hired VP of Technical Operations Jonathan Heiliger from Opsware to manage its data center operations, and has been heavily expanding its data centers around the country.

As of May 2008, Facebook reported 70 million active users, roughly double the number of a year ago.

Check out The Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

Posted by Justin Smith

Filed in Facebook

Inside Facebook Sponsors

4 Responses to “Facebook Takes Out $100 Million Loan for Server Farms”

Inside Facebook » Facebook Hires Mozilla’s Mike Schroepfer as Director of Engineering Says:
July 28th, 2008 at 8:47 am
[...] team, and is investing heavily in building a top notch infrastructure - it went so far as to take out a $100 million loan to buy thousands more servers earlier this [...]
Inside Facebook » Zuckerberg Says Facebook’s Focus is on Growth, Not Revenue Says:
October 9th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
[...] somewhere between $300-$400 million in the bank from a combination of recent equity investments and debt financings, it makes sense for Facebook to make sure they build out a widely adopted communications platform [...]
Everything Else is a Hobby or… I Read the Economist AFTER Posting Today, I Swear! » No Mod Required » Blog Archive Says:
February 10th, 2009 at 7:49 am
[...] **Facebook knows this first-hand- they had to borrow $100 million for servers last year. [...]
Facebook Raising Another $100 Million to Fund Increasing Server Costs Says:
March 26th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
[...] was this time one year ago that Facebook closed a $100 million line of credit from TriplePoint Capital. At the time, Facebook reported 70 million active users. Today, Facebook [...]