TechCrunch and GigaOm are reporting that Automattic provider of the WordPress open-source blogging software and spam filter Akismet, has raised $29.5M in a Series B round of financing led by Polaris Venture Partners . Other participants in the round include The New York Times, True Ventures, and Radar Ventures.

The large injection of capital will not only go towards the development of Akismet and WordPress (the downloadable software) but the development of WordPress.com (its hosted blogging platform), Gravatar (its avatar offering), and BBPress (an upcoming hosted bulletin board product) as well.

This is interesting news, i have a new fascination for bbPress and i hope with this new round of cash injected we will see even more development on the bbPress front.

Source:

TechCrunch

GigaOm

**
Correction, I posted earlier that True Ventures led the series B financing when in fact it was Polaris Venture Partners, having provided $20m of the $29.5 million (Mike Hirshland, general partner at Polaris, is on the WordPress board).

My apologies for the mistake.

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