Facebook Borrowing $100 Million for More Servers

Saturday, May 10th, 2008 by Janet Thaeler

Facebook Borrowing $100 Million for More Servers

Facebook is borrowing $100 million to accommodate growth on the site. The money, from venture loan firm TriplePoint, brings the amount raised to around $350 million.

The site has grown quickly and needs around 50,000 more servers to handle the load. Facebook has over 70 million active users and around 109 million monthly visitors.

According to Business Week, Google and Microsoft need a lot of server space. Google has at least a million servers and adds 500,000 per year. Microsoft is adding 200,000 servers per year.

While Facebook keeps expanding, their revenue is rumored to be at about break even. Last year they were said to bring in $150 million and plan to double that figure this year. They have more than 500 employees.

Here’s a short history of Facebook investments:

2004 – $500,000 from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel in an angel round.
2005 – $12.8 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, $25 million from Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners.
2007 – Microsoft invested $246 million for 1.6% share in Facebook and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing invested $60 million.

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13 comments on “Facebook Borrowing $100 Million for More Servers”

Elections guy Says:

May 10th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

This amount sounds greater than YouTube service amount.

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HYIP Info Says:

May 10th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

WOW, such a great amounts

HYIP Info’s last blog post..HYIP Info: What Is HYIP?
Samirb Says:

May 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am

The amount of servers Google adds (500,000) really surprised me. I would like to know how many servers each data center holds.

Samirb’s last blog post..SEO’s Need to Grow Up
wii guy Says:

May 11th, 2008 at 6:20 am

That is incredible. I wonder how many YouTube need.

John

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abitur Says:

May 11th, 2008 at 7:24 am

wow this is incredibel. but does facebook take this money through the ads?
seo dude Says:

May 11th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

This is crazy! I would have never guessed Google has that many. I was thinking around 1000 per datacenter.

wii guy, I assume YouTube is part of that Google’s million.
Eva White Says:

May 11th, 2008 at 11:59 pm

How does one get a slice of the pie?

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jimmy Says:

May 12th, 2008 at 6:34 am

thats just crazy, i think of all the problems you can have with just one server never mind those huge amounts they have lol
Nick Says:

May 12th, 2008 at 8:05 am

I’m assuming facebook’s 500 employees don’t manage their datacentres?

Nick’s last blog post..Can Pro Evo Beat FIFA?
Web Marketing Man Says:

May 12th, 2008 at 1:40 pm

Interesting post, just one burning question remains…how many servers is facebook currently running on? They’re addindg 50,000 but knowing the baseline will help. Suppose I can go and Google it…
Tiffany Says:

May 12th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

That’s such a big amount! Once again, user also get the benefit.
Google’s Warnung vor sozialen Netzen :: hirschgarden Says:

May 20th, 2008 at 8:37 am

[...] zu produzieren. Wobei das sicherlich sinnvoll ist, wenn man bedenkt, dass Google jedes Jahr 500.000 (fünf hundert tausend) neue Server zu seinem Serverpark hinzufügen [...]
Musashi Says:

May 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 am

“Google has at least a million servers and adds 500,000 per year. Microsoft is adding 200,000 servers per year.”
No wonder google rules. With all this horsepower they can always return better search results with performance-eating algorithms.
It is time for microsoft to wake up and get even.