Groupon Actually Raised $377M in New Funding
When Groupon Inc. announced earlier this month that it raised $950 million in venture capital (the press release’s headline casually touted “like, a billion dollars”), many publications quickly called this funding round a record.
But as we (and others) pointed out at the time, a large chunk of that money wasn’t going to the company. Instead, hundreds of millions of dollars would go straight to shareholders to give them liquidity.
Now we know exactly how much, thanks to a new regulatory filing from Groupon that shows $573 million is devoted to buy stock from existing shareholders. That means Groupon only raised $377 million in new equity.
