Twitter is mulling over raising a new round of financing, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and a variety of venture firms are frothing at the mouth to lead the round. The valuation is likely to be in the $3 billion range, and they’ll likely raise more than the $100 million they took a little over a year ago at a $1 billion valuation. To date Twitter has raised around $160 million.
Who are the likely investors? Russian firm DST, which has invested in Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is certainly trying to lead the round. But we hear that they are just one of many twisting arms to get in.
We recently reported that some funds set up to buy Twitter shares from employees were closing sales at $1.6 billion for larger transactions. Smaller transactions have apparently been closed at much higher prices.
We’ve also recently heard from a single source that Google was in talks with Twitter to acquire them for up to $5 billion, but other sources seemed to think those discussions never happened, or were extremely preliminary at best. Sometimes these types of acquisition rumors get started simply because investment banks attempt to jump start deals.