Fortune’s Dan Primack reports that the LivingSocial management and investors have pocketed about half of the $400 million in new VC money they raised at the beginning of the month, citing this SEC filing.
This cashing out early thing is not without precedent, in fact leader in the daily deals space Groupon pulled a similar endeavor during its DST round last April and in January, where it took $573 million off of the table after its $950 million round of funding, allowing founder Andrew Mason to solve what he called “the money problem” or the temptation to succumb to buyout offers (like Google’s 6 billion) because you feel like you need the money.
LivingSocial has raised a total of $632 million in funding from Steve Case, Grotech Ventures, US Venture Partners, Amazon, T.Rowe Price and others. I’ve contacted the company for more information and will update this post if it responds with anything useful.