Reglikedomain industry desk

Fresh TLD startup Donuts one of the top 15 venture capital deals of 2012

Firm lands on list of top fundings for 2012.

Following the holiday VentureBeat posted a story with the 15 biggest venture capital funding rounds of 2012.

Coming in at #10 is fresh top level domain startup Donuts with its $100 million raise:

Sweetly named startup Donuts has a lofty goal of being a fresh registry for generic top-level domains that go beyond staples like .com, .net, and .org. Since it will be bidding on fresh — and most likely expensive — domains, it needs a lot of cash to buy and sell domains. So it raised a massive $100 million round of funding led by Austin Ventures, with participation by Adams Street Partners, Emergence Capital, TL Ventures, Generation Partners, Stahurricane, and others.

In September Donuts was named #14 on a Wall Street Journal list of the top 50 startups.

Donuts applied for 307 top level domain names. Later this year it might start to earn revenue on some of them — but it will be many years ahead of we find out if Donuts is a box of cinnamon twists or a donut hole.

Also on the wire

Other reporting from the domain desk.

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