Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal
Twitter has received a $ 300 million investment from Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud and his investment company, Kingdom Holding.
The deal, which was first reported by Bloomberg, was officially announced in a press statement released by Kingdom Holding Sunday night. The statement reads in part: “This investment was the result of several months of negotiations and comprehensive due diligence and represents a strategic stake in Twitter.”
With a reported net worth of $ 19.6 billion, Prince Alwaleed is the 26th richest person in the world according to Forbes. While Kingdom Holding is probably best known for its media investments — the company holds seven percent of News Corp.’s class B shares, along with a number of media properties in the Arab world — Alwaleed is also familiar with the tech scene: He has been a high profile owner of Apple stock since 1997, when he bought a five percent stake in the company for $ 115 million.
The new round comes just a few months after Twitter closed on some $ 800 million in a funding round led by DST Global. This brings Twitter’s total funding to nearly $ 1.5 billion.
Of course, the company is working to generate money on its own accord: Earlier this month Twitter unveiled a new redesign that, among other things, gives brands special abilities to build dedicated profile pages. This is seemingly part of an effort to ultimately bring more advertisers to the micro-blogging site. But while Twitter’s leadership seems focused on making such revenue initiatives a priority, it looks like the company is still not turning down outside money just yet.
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