The acquisition of the FAN advertising platform is Rubicon's first major purchase since it signalled its ambition by in February.
Announcing the purchase and funding round today, Frank Addante, chief executive and founder of the Rubicon Project, said there is "great synergy" across the technology and vision of FAN and the Rubicon project.
"The addition of FAN’s technology assets positions us to provide a complete platform 18 to 24 months ahead of schedule. Combining the technology with our market share and financial strength, we now have everything we need to successfully execute our vision." he said.
More than 100 FAN employees will join the Rubicon Project team, including John Carnahan, former chief technology officer and executive vice-president of product, technology and operations at FAN, who will become the Rubicon Project’s CTO. FAN's sales staff will not be joining the company.
As part of the acquisition, Rubicon said News Corporation will receive a non-controlling minority equity stake in the enlarged company. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed but Rubicon, said it reached profitability this month and will generate more than $100m in revenue this year, "ahead of plan and excluding any revenue from the FAN acquisition".
The latest round of funding, which takes Rubicon's total to date to $60m, includes undisclosed amounts from News Corporation, Clearstone Venture Partners, IDG Ventures Asia, Mayfield Fund, NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund and Jarl Mohn.
Rubicon's yield optimisation platform Revv now powers 60 billion ad transactions a month and will process 500 billion real-time bidding transactions in Q4, Addante said.
He added: "REVV fuels the industry’s largest display advertising marketplace, where 600+ ad networks, exchanges and DSPs from around the world reach 550+ million unique users."
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