OpenX closes $10 million Series C Funding

On Tuesday, May 26, 2009, OpenX announced that it closed it’s third round of funding. This Series C funding of US$ 10 million brought the total sum invested in the company to almost US$ 31 million.

More information can be found in the company’s press release and blog. The news was also covered by technology news blog TechCrunch.

OpenX originated about 10 years ago as a typical open source project, back then it was known as ‘phpAdsNew’. It was actually the brainchild of the creator of phpMyAdmin, the tool that is still being used today to manage many MySQL databases. It went through a few incarnations, including ‘phpAdsNew 2′, then OpenAds and in the past year the name OpenX.

Developing a free open source ad server can hardly be considered a money making opportunity. That’s why I was thrilled back in the fall of 2007 when OpenX co-founder Scott Switzer told me about his idea for an open advertising market place. It seemed like a smart plan, and one that could bring in serious revenue because it is based on the enormous traffic that the combined OpenX users around the world generate. This idea is what we now know as OpenX Market, opened to the general user community in April of 2009.

In the current economic climate, investors are not as keen as they were a few years back. So the fact that in the middle of a downturn OpenX is able to close a third round of funding can be considered a tremendous achievement. I congratulate the OpenX team on this and wish them all the best. This also brings them a huge extra responsibility to spend the money wisely, for the investors but also for the OpenX user community.

Update May 28: OpenX blog now also carries this news, linked added.