A Russian internet investment company will pay $200 million (£125 million) for a 2 per cent stake in Facebook in a deal that values the social networking group at $10 billion.

Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which is controlled by Yuri Milner, the Russian internet entrepreneur, also said that it would offer to buy at least $100 million of Facebook ordinary shares from existing shareholders.

The DST offer, for 1.96 per cent of the company, represents Facebook’s first big funding injection since 2007, when Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6 per cent stake, valuing the company at $15 billion.

Since then, some investors are reported to have become frustrated at the social networking site’s reluctance to capitalise on its 200 million worldwide users. In April, The New York Post reported that the company’s private equity investors had informally valued it at only $3 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, said that a number of groups had approached Facebook, but DST stood out “because of the global perspective it brings, backed up by the impressive growth and financial achievements of its internet investments”.

DST, based in Moscow and London, owns stakes in Mail.ru, Russia’s most popular website, and has bought up large holdings in a host of eastern European internet companies. DST websites account for more than 70 per cent of all page views from Russian-speaking internet users. Its social networks are the market leaders in more than 13 countries, with a combined population of more than 350 million people.

“This investment demonstrates Facebook’s success at creating a global network for people to share and connect. We’ve worked hard to bring more than 200 million people, 70 per cent outside the US, on to Facebook to share with friends, family and co-workers,” Mr Zuckerberg said.

Mr Milner said that his company was delighted to invest in Facebook. “Our investment experience in other regions reveals the tremendous value social networking companies create, as they redefine how people communicate and interact. By every important metric — user growth and engagement, technological innovation and financial performance — Facebook is on a similar trajectory, though on a much more global scale,” he said.

Mr Milner was previously chief executive of Mail.ru. His partners in DST, founded in 2005, include Gregory Finger, previously head of the Moscow office of NCH, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, and Alexander Tamas, a former co-head of internet and software coverage in Europe, the Middle East and Asia for Goldman Sachs.

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, has made several public statements that the company did not need extra cash, but analysts said that it could use its new money to fund its growing operations, including bandwidth, storage and engineering costs.

Contrary to initial reports that DST had demanded a seat on the Facebook board as part of the deal, Facebook said that the Russian company would not be represented. Mr Zuckerberg said that he expected Facebook to be cashflow positive in 2010.

Facebook, founded in February 2004, has grown rapidly and recently signed up its 200-millionth member. However, unlike other internet giants, such as Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo!, Facebook has yet to demonstrate how it will translate traffic into revenue.

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