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Then was acquired by , and Tumblr came along with it—changing ownership once again.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, on the purchase: “When the possibility to join forces became concrete, it felt like a once-in-a-generation opportunity to have two beloved platforms work alongside each other to build a better, more open, more inclusive – and, frankly, more fun web. I knew we had to do it.”

He added that he is “absolutely committed to is to preserve the passion and sense of community that so many people around the world – and all over the web – have come to associate with Tumblr.”

We’ll get more into how past transfers impacted Tumblr’s trajectory later to help give some context for this new buy, but first let’s look into the social media platform’s funding history.

Prior to being passed around, Tumblr raised $125.3 million dollars in venture capital. In 2007, the year it was founded, it raised $750,000 by and . The two subsequent rounds were also led by both the aforementioned investors: a $4.5 million Series B and a $5 million Series C.

Sequoia Capital bet on the company in 2010 and led a $30 million Series D, with participation from and . At the time of this financing event, TechCrunch reported that Tumblr only had 12 employees. As per yesterday’s deal, Automattic will acquire about 200 employees from Tumblr.

And about two years before Verizon bought Tumblr, the platform raised $85 million led by Insight Partners, .

So what changed?

It’s A Hot Potato

In 2010, that he wanted Tumblr to be the “best place in the world for creative communities,” calling out Facebook for being “arguably hostile” toward these groups. Karp was an outspoken critic of censorship and champion of net neutrality in the media community. That changed as the platform was passed between many owners and executives left.

In 2017, , then of The Daily Beast, how Tumblr’s changing ownership impacted Karp’s once strenuous handle over the platform’s freedom to post. Below, Lorenz details Verizon’s efforts to “dismantle the open web.”

The company spends millions in lobbying efforts and, in 2011, it sued the FCC to overturn net-neutrality rules. In April of this year, its current general counsel, Kathy Grillo, wrote an open letter voicing Verizon’s support in repealing the protections.

Verizon owning Tumblr, thus, wasn’t the best look for a platform that wanted to be the “Best place in the world for creative communities.”

Those woes intensified into action when Tumblr banned explicit content on December 17, 2018. The move was deemed controversial by some in the blogger community, as creative users had their content hidden ().

Tumblr felt the reaction in traffic. , the company had 376 million unique visitors globally. In January 2019, Tumblr had 437 million users. The chart below, from Statista, shows the global online and mobile users of the platform over time.

It even inspired some users, like , who prefers to go by her first name, to move to other platforms that felt less censored.

June, who has used Tumblr since 2011 and draws lovers, cuddling or kissing, felt impacted by the porn ban. Her drawings and sketches have been deleted, although Tumblr claims it does not delete work, just hides it from the public.

“I know the algorithm was used at first to ban the porn bots on the website but the thing is that it sucked. Really bad at first. They’ve corrected a little the algorithm cause it used to ban EVERYTHING on the platform (including totally safe drawings or pictures),” she told Crunchbase News.

She explained how Tumblr has since gotten “deserted.”

“My dashboard used to be liveful and I have to scroll on it every day to see all the news, but now I could go once a week on it and still be up to date.”

It’s inspired her to move to Twitter, .

Currently, June has . Unless Automattic changes the ban, she doesn’t think her opinion of Tumblr will change.

Illustration: .

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The last time Pantheon raised cash was a Series C of $29 million in July 2016, according to . The new round brings the company’s total funding up to $96.8 million.

The company, which runs more than 280,000 websites, works to boost functions like website performance and security while also rolling out marketing campaigns and ads. Its customers include companies like Yale, Coach, United Nations, Quicken Loans, and IBM.

Here’s why this new round is important: For its size the content management space lacks adequate venture funding, as our reporter Mary Ann Azevedo told us last March. WordPress CMS has grown to 33.3 percent of the Internet up from 13 percent in 2010, .

When talking to Crunchbase last Spring, Austin-based Silverton Partners General Partner Kip McClanahan said, “one out of four websites are powered by WordPress… that’s a pretty good field to play in.” Silverton had invested in WordPress Hosting startup, WP Engine.

Conversely startups that helped WordPress function better (not just Pantheon, but also companies like ) raised only $300,000 in funding in 2017, according to Crunchbase Data.

So the key takeaway? This infusion of capital to a company that supports systems like WordPress and Drupal is not only good, but rare news. Let’s see if other venture capitalists follow suit.

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, now a year past its $250 million deal with Silver Lake, has $132 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). According to WP Engine, the new revenue metric comes on the back of 20 percent customer growth over the past year.

The figures are eye-catching for a few reasons. First, it’s rare for private companies to share hard revenue figures as they are not required to do so. And, we have a few other data points regarding WP Engine that we can string in a line. Let’s examine, starting with the firm’s 2015 funding round:

• March 2015: WP Engine raises a $23 million Series C, valuing the firm at $120 million, pre-money. (, ).
• Late 2017: WP Engine crosses the $100 million ARR mark. ()
• January 2018: WP Engine sees $250 million Silver Lake transaction, buying out at leat some extant shareholders and providing primary capital for its own use. (, )
• January 2019: WP Engine crosses the $132 million ARR mark. ()

There’s some market quibbling about what to call WP Engine’s $250 million funding event. Given that one of the firm’s co-founders that “[t]he majority of the funds pay back our early investors who believed in us enough to trust us with their money,” it could be called an exit. Or partial-exit. What matters, of course, is what valuation was used when the new monies came in.

We don’t know what the firm was worth at that time, or what it’s worth now. But as a data point, venture capitalist and burgeoning conference magnate . When it reached that valuation mark isn’t clear.

So, what can we tell from all the above? That WP Engine grew its ARR around 30 percent in 2018, depending on how “late” the $100 million ARR mark occurred in 2017; the later the metric was reached, the better its trailing growth rate is.

All told, it’s an interesting set of figures from a firm that I . It’s all grown up!

Top Image Credit: .