I had lunch a few weeks ago with wunderkind Matt Mullenweg about all things Wordpress - and Automattic and Pingomatic. When I asked about raising venture capital (because it's the Web 2.0 thing to do these days) he laughed and said he'd enjoyed a lot of free lunches from VCs. Well, it looks like someone must have taken Matt to the right restaurant because Automattic has accepted a small minority investment. Apparently, there will be no parties or a move to new, fancy digs but Matt said it will:

 "allow us take better advantage of the opportunities before us and also for us to keep our promise to everyone of you to maintain, a fast, stable and innovative platform in the long-term."

  Automattic will use some of the money to keep up with the popularity of Wordpress.com, which is getting 4.2 million hits a day, and spam-killer  Askimet. One of the key questions Matt and Automattic are probably going to have to ask themselves down the road is what do they want to be when they grow up. Wordpress, for example, has as much cache and opportunity in the blog publishing market as SixApart, which raised $12-million last month from a group of investors that includes Intel Capital. If Matt, who will be in Toronto next month for the mesh conference, wants to take Wordpress into the corporate market, for example, he'll likely have to raise more capital - and find no scarcity of suitors. At the very least, it appears Wordpress is taking off within the mainstream blogosphere, and there will come a point fairly soon when its success will start to strain Automattic's resources. In any event, it's a nice "problem" to have.
Update: Silicon Beat reports Automattic raised cash from Polaris Ventures, Blacksmith Capital, Radar Partners and CNet. Mullenweg comments on Silicon Beat pointing out that a few months he declared no interest in raising capital.