Saudi billionaire, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, through his investment firm Kingdom Holdings, has bought a US$300 million "strategic stake" in Twitter, giving the San Francisco-based microblogging company a valuation of around $10 billion.
The five-year old microblogging site, which gives its users the ability to share information in real-time by sending 140-chacracter messages or 'Tweets', has a user-base of more than 100 million active users. In more recent times, Twitter has been revamping its site to make it faster and easier to use.
Going by an earlier valuation of Twitter of around $8 billion, Alwaleed and his holding company's investment would amount to a 3.75 percent stake. This investment should give Twitter that much more time to grow before opting to sell its shares in an initial public offering.
The prince was quoted in a press release as saying, "Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact."
Prince Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, has a personal net worth of around $20 billion - he was ranked 26th on the Forbes global billionaires list.
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