An influential Silicon Valley venture-capital firm has gobbled up more than $80 million in Twitter shares on secondary markets, a source said yesterday.
Andreessen Horowitz took a bite of the meteoric micro-blogging site by gobbling up a chunk of its privately traded shares, according to the person close to the Menlo Park, Calif.-firm.
The news was first reported on All Things Digital.
Twitter, which has about 175 million registered users, was recently valued at about $3.7 billion after a $200 million fund-raising round.
Since it was launched nearly five years ago, Twitter has proved to be an infinitely popular service, but has yet to prove it can make significant profits.
It is rumored to be heading for an IPO -- while some believe the fast-growing tech concern is more likely to be purchased.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter has recently held low-level talks that value the company at between $8 billion and $10 billion.
Andreessen Horowitz, led by Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, bought the shares from Twitter employees, Margit Wennmachers, a partner at the firm, told Bloomberg News. The VC firm did not immediately return requests for comment.
Twitter declined to discuss the transaction.
Andreessen was an early investor in Twitter.
There are two major secondary markets, SecondMarket and SharesPost, which trade in shares of private companies like Twitter and facebook, but they do not discuss specifics of the transactions.
The secondary markets have proved a useful tool for companies before an IPO listing because their employees can earn cash from trading their shares
In November, Andreessen Horowitz raised $650 million to spread around on these Twitter-type investments.
The firm has been aggressive and now owns stakes in such hot properties as Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare.
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