Tumblr Raises $85 Million Round From Richard Branson, VCs

Blogging community operator Tumblr has raised $85 million in new funding from Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, the Chernin Group, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Richard Branson also participated in the round.

The news was broken moments ago by the NYT’s Jenna Wortham, who writes that the company will announce the financing later today.

The round brings Tumblr’s total of capital raised to over $125 million. The valuation of the company in its latest financing round was not disclosed.

Business Insider pegged the valuation at ‘$800 million+’ last August.

The funding comes at a time when Tumblr is experiencing massive growth across the board. Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp told us last June that the service recently hit 400 million pageviews in a single day (which comes down to roughly 5,000 pageviews a second).

According to Wortham, 30 million blogs have been created using Tumblr to date, which now generate more than 40 million posts every day.

Update: here’s more info from the official release:

This year alone, we’ve grown from 2 to 13 billion pageviews a month, with tremendous international adoption. Mobile pageviews have increased 17 times during that period. And the 30 million blogs on Tumblr now generate more than 40 million posts per day, passing 10 billion total posts just two weeks ago.

This year our little team has grown from 15 to 50, and it is incredibly important to us that we work with partners who understand our vision and share our ambition to build the best platform for the most creative people in the world.

Last Summer, Tumblr released a revamped iPhone app, which also helped spike the numbers.

For your further reading (and viewing) pleasure: TC Cribs: Inside Tumblr’s Reblog-Worthy Digs