According to a press release today  Minds + Machines raised an additional $14 Million dollars by selling shares of its parent company in what was described to me “as a oversubscribed funding round”

Shares of the company are up  7%+ today on the news

Here is the press release:

“The Directors of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (AIM:TLDH.L), the only publicly traded company focused exclusively on acquiring and operating new generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”), are delighted to announce that the Company has today conditionally placed 109,468,353 new ordinary shares (the “Ordinary Shares”) at a placing price of 8.25p per Ordinary Share (the “Placing Price”) with institutional and other investors to raise £9,031,139 before expenses (equivalent to approximately US$14.2 million at current exchange rates) subject to admission (the “Placing”).”

“The Company intends to use the Placing proceeds to provide additional working capital and in particular, to fund the application slots and subsequent fees for new gTLDs on behalf of itself and clients of Minds + Machines. ”

“The Company expects to submit multiple batches for application slots during the application window having already submitted for its first twenty application slots. In January, TLDH announced that Minds+Machines will also be providing the back-end registry services for the proposed new .BAYERN domain.”

Antony Van Couvering, CEO of TLDH, commented:
“We are delighted that both existing and new investors have responded so positively to our plan.  With a new cash balance of approximately US$25 million, no debt, and a public stock, we believe that TLDH is ideally positioned to participate in the new gTLD opportunity.”

Peter Dengate Thrush, Chairman of TLDH, added:
”TLDH management believes that the increased capital will allow it to increase significantly the number of applications it is able to make, allowing it to develop a wider, more diversified portfolio of names in multiple languages and scripts.”

The new Ordinary Shares being issued pursuant to the Placing will, on issue, rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares in issue and application will be made for the new Ordinary Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. Trading in the new Ordinary Shares on AIM is expected to commence on or around 17 February 2012.”