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- guardian.co.uk, Monday May 12 2008 12.34 BST
Facebook has raised $100m (£51m) to expand its server capacity to help the social networking website cope with an explosive growth rate in user numbers.
Facebook is borrowing $100m from the venture loan company TriplePoint Capital to finance the expansion of server farms – computers that handle the increasing number of users as well as the increasing number of applications, pictures and video people add to the site.
The site needs the money to cope with a dizzying growth rate that has seen worldwide monthly unique user numbers increase by 240% year-on-year for March this year from 32 million to 109 million, according to the research firm Comscore.
Today's loan, which will not dilute Facebook's equity, will be entirely used for buying servers, said its chief financial officer, Gideon Yu.
Google is estimated by some sources to be buying 500,000 servers each year, while Microsoft's annual consumption is around 200,000.
Facebook has now raised somewhere around $350m from loans and selling equity.
In October, Microsoft invested $240 million in exchange for a 1.6% stake in Facebook.
The Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has invested twice in Facebook, in November and March, contributing a total of around $120m.
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