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“Venture lending peaked during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early part of this decade, but is making a comeback as startups use debt to pay for computer servers, telecom gear, and software … The TriplePoint lease has a degree of flexibility not offered by a traditional loan. For instance, Facebook can exchange or replace equipment during the term of the lease.”
Essentially, it’s a really, really huge credit card, with very favorable terms. In all, Facebook has now raised in excess of $300 million, including $240 million from Microsoft, $100 million from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, and an undisclosed amount from the Samwer brothers.
As for the servers, Business Week estimates the $100M will be used to buy roughly 50,000 servers. Last month, Data Center Knowledge published a report estimating that the social network currently has around 10,000 servers in operation.