Facebook borrows $100 million to buy more servers

US-based social networking site Facebook, which has already raised $360 million, is now borrowing $100 million from TriplePoint Capital that specializes in lending money to startups. “It will be used entirely for servers,” Gideon Yu, chief financial officer, Facebook, has said.

Facebook does not disclose the number of servers it operates. But research firm Data Centre Knowledge puts the tally at about 10,000. The new fund will help Facebook buy approximately 50,000 more servers, reports BusinessWeek.

Launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is growing rapidly. In March 2008, Facebook attracted over 35 million users in US, up 71 per cent from nearly 21 million a year earlier. Its worldwide total more than tripled to over 109 million in the period, according to comScore.

In October 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in exchange for a 1.6 per cent stake in Facebook. Then in November 2007 and March 2008, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing wrote two checks for a total of $120 million.