Automattic Raises $160M To Catch Up With The Web’s Evolution

Automattic , the company behind WordPress.com and the open-source WordPress platform, today announced that it has raised a $160 million Series C round from Insight Ventures, True Ventures, Chris Sacca, Endurance, Tiger and Iconiq.

That’s a massive funding round for WordPress, especially given that it hasn’t taken funding since 2008 and at that time had “only” raised $12 million. The reason for this, Automattic CEO and founder Matt Mullenweg says, is that when he took over as CEO earlier this year, he realized that WordPress was actually capital constrained.

“Only a year ago, I said ‘Automattic is healthy, generating cash, and already growing as fast as it can so there’s no need for the company to raise money directly — we’re not capital constrained,'” Mullenweg writes today. But today he knows better.

WordPress finds itself in an interesting spot these days. According to some stats, it powers 22 percent of the…