Once worth $31B, Infospace mobile service sold for $135M

October 16, 2007 | Matt Marshall
View Comments

infospace.jpgMobile-content distribution company Motricity has agreed to buy mobile unit of publicly traded InfoSpace for a mere $135 million, an anticlimactic end to one the most bubbly stories ever. InfoSpace was once valued at $31 billion for its mobile web technology.

That was at top of the market during 2000, and InfoSpace has since struggled to reorient itself. InfoSpace said it is selling the money-losing mobile services unit so that it can focus further on its online search services.

Motricity, of Durham, N.C., is backed by more than $220 million in funding, including $50 million from activist investor Carl Icahn earlier this year. The company is in the process of raising another $185 million from Icahn and others, according to the Red Herring. Previous investors in the three-year-old company include Cyrus Capital Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Massey Burch Capital Corp., Noro-Moseley Partners, Intel Capital, Advanced Equities and the Wakefield Group. All of these are rumored to be partaking in the pending round.

Infospace’s unit gives Motricity customers among 11 of the 13 mobile-phone carriers in North America, including AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.

Motricity earlier acquired mobile marketing company GoldPocket Wireless. Motricity also cut 50 jobs last year.

Next Story:
Previous Story:

Print
Email
Twitter
Facebook
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Delicious
Google
More...

Tags:

About the Author,

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.

blog comments powered by Disqus