Kutcher bets on SeatGeek as online ticket sites battle

Celebu-vestor Ashton Kutcher is at it again, using his venture capital fund, A Grade Investments, to pour an undisclosed amount of funding into online ticket-search firm startup SeatGeek, the company announced today.

SeatGeek uses algorithms to match the best deal with a customer’s specific needs for an event. It lets event-goers peruse thousands of potential pricing and seating options available for concerts and sporting events on the secondary market.

The company said it would use the money to hire more employees (it currently has about a dozen), add more events and venues, and begin a push into the lucrative European market.

The company is on a bit of a roll — on Tuesday it announced it has teamed up with one of the five biggest sporting publications online, Bleacher Report.

The New York-based startup  landed $550,000 in funding from a group of investors and signed a distribution deal with the Wall Street Journal back in October.

It also partnered with Yahoo Sports as it continues to try to carve out a niche in the crowded ticket comparison and price forecasting sites for sporting and entertainment events.

Its competitors include similar ticketing sites FanSnap and TicketsBuy.

Kutcher is well known for spotting — and funding — the latest “cool kids” in Silicon Valley and has previously invested in companies such as Flipboard, Nowmov, Optimizely, Blekko and Quora.

Kutcher heads up A Grade Investments with Israeli businessman Guy Oseary.

Past funding has come from a consortium of previous backers PKS Capital, Founder Collective, Stage One Capital, Trisiras Group and angel investors Mark Wachen, Thomas Lehrman, Sunil Hirani, Allen Levinson and Arie Abecassis.

Although the terms of today’s deal were undisclosed, previous funding brought the start-up a total investment of over $2 million since its founding in 2009.