Tiger Global doubles down on WordPress.com firm

Tiger Global's private-equity branch, run by Lee Fixel and Scott Shleifer, has doubled down on its investment in Automattic, the maker of the popular WordPress.com blogging service.

Tiger Global bought another $60 million in Automattic shares through the so-called secondary market for late-stage private companies. Another investment firm, Iconiq Capital, also invested $15 million in the latest secondary transaction. The firms bought the stock from long-time Automattic investor Polaris Partners.

The deals follow a $50 million financing round for Automattic that Tiger led in May. The new transactions were closed at a valuation 25% higher than the May financing round, Automattic noted. It declined to comment specifically on valuation.

"I'm glad to be even more fully aligned with Tiger. I think it says a lot to their excitement in the company that just a few months after joining the family and learning more about the company they significantly increased their stake, and at a significant bump in valuation," Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, wrote on his blog.

The deals suggest that there's healthy appetite among investors for successful Internet start-ups. Twitter's planned IPO and a surge in publicly traded Internet companies like Trulia and Pandora Media is also adding to this bullishness.

Tiger Global has been very actively lately. The firm invested in online ticketing start-up Eventbrite earlier this year, and followed that up with a secondary deal similar to the Automattic transaction.

SurveyMonkey did a $800 million debt and equity deal in January that was led by CEO Dave Goldberg and Tiger Global.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tiger's latest investment in Automattic earlier Tuesday.