The Huffington Post, the American news and opinion website, has secured $25 million of funding from a venture capital firm.

The investment from Oak Investment partners, a California-based company, will help finance the expansion of the influential site into local news across the US and investigative journalism.

Today's announcement follows a report in The Times earlier this month which revealed that the site, founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer in 2005, was set to confirm the completion of $15 million (£10 million) fundraising from investors.

The Huffington Post also announced the appointment of Fred Harman, chief executive of Oak, to its board. Oak holds about $8.4 billion in capital, and focuses its investments on sectors including new media, clean energy and enterprise and software services.

Ms Huffington is one of the most influential figures on the American political scene, and a close friend of Barack Obama, the president-elect.

The Huffington Post, which bills itself as "the internet newspaper", is one of the most linked-to blogs on the internet, and attracts about 2.5 million regular bloggers.

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