Chinese Video Sharing Site Youku Picks Up Another $40 Million

Chinese online video sharing site Youku.com has raised an additional US$30 million in private equity funding, and secured a US$10 million equipment loan. From the release, "Maverick Capital led the financing round and joined the Board of Directors. All existing investors in the company, including Brookside Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital, and Chengwei Ventures, participated. The US$10 million equipment loan is provided by Western Technology Investment." This brings the total amount raised to $80 million.

Youku self-reports over 100 million unique visitors per month and each user spends about 300 minutes per month on Youku. iResearch's reports that Youku is now the 6th largest website in China in terms of total user time spent.

Youku also announced today that it has entered into a variety of content partnerships including Universal Music, EMI Music, Huayi Music and a large number of top film, TV and music performers in China.

Here's a video -- it looks like China comes back to beat Italy in volleyball in a long, long match.