Big Money

Goldman Invests $500M in Facebook

Sends social network's value to $50 billion.

An IPO can’t be far behind, can it? Goldman Sachs is sinking $500 million into Facebook, which, along with an investment from a Russian company, boosts the site's value to $50 billion. That means Facebook has a higher value than eBay, Yahoo, or Time Warner, and all without becoming a publicly traded company. The input from Goldman is not only a signal of Facebook's growing might, but also will allow the company to poach top talent from other companies and possibly pursue acquisitions. It will free up some of the company's earlier investors, including Facebook employees, to cash in their stakes. It could also put pressure on the company to go public, an idea that CEO Mark Zuckerberg still shrugs off.