Thursday, October 21, 2010

Amazon Backs New $250M Kleiner Perkins Social Fund

Amazon.com is backing a new, $250M investment fund from venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers today, as a major investor. According to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, it has established the $250M fund to specifically invest in entrepreneurs in the social space, with major backing from Amazon.com, Facebook, Zynga, Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC. In a press conference announcing the fund, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos joked that he hoped that the startups receiving the funding would "spend all $250M on Amazon Web Services," saying that the top four Facebook applications are current AWS users.