Bidding War For Twitter Raises Valuation To Nearly $4 Billion. Kleiner Perkins Currently In Pole Position

Two weeks ago we reported that Twitter was mulling over raising a big new round of financing and the expected valuation was in the $3 billion range. Things have developed since then, it seems.

The bidding has gotten more intense from what we’re hearing. Russian firm DST, among others, submitted offers to invest valuing the company above $3 billion, say multiple sources. But the current leader, and likely winner, is Kleiner Perkins, say multiple sources. And the likely valuation when the smoke clears will be close to $4 billion.

Alpha investor and Kleiner investor John Doerr is personally leading the charge, we’ve heard, and is acting something like a dog with a bone that won’t let go. “Doerr wants to own part of Twitter, And Doerr generally gets what he wants” says one person with knowledge of the negotiations.

Is the deal done? No. Another investor could step up with an even higher valuation, forcing Twitter to make a difficult (even legally difficult) decision to pass on Kleiner. But as things stand right now, our understanding is Kleiner is in the pole position on the round, and unless something dramatic happens, they’ll soon be an investor.

This fits in neatly with Kleiner’s push to invest in the “third wave” of technology disruption. See his April guest post here on TechCrunch for more details on how they’re thinking about their current investment strategy.




Twitter
Website: twitter.com
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Founded: March 21, 2006
Funding: $160M

Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging… Learn More


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Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Website: kpcb.com
Location: Menlo Park, California, United States
Founded: 1972
Investments: FindTheBest, OPOWER, Stipple, Intersect ENT, Callaway Digital Arts , Endgame Systems, CafeBots, Siluria Technologies, and more

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a well known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, due in large part to their past success. They were early investors in many significant companies, including…




John Doerr
Companies: Amazon, Google, Zazzle, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, Move, Intel

John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Together with KPCB’s partners, John has backed many of America’s best entrepreneurial leaders,…