Online staffing firm Elance-oDesk announced a $30 million over-subscribed round of funding led by venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, with participation from additional existing major shareholders including T. Rowe Price, FirstMark, Sigma West, NEA and the Stripes Group.

“We first invested in oDesk back in 2006 because we saw the potential for the company to reinvent the way people work,” said Kevin Harvey, general partner at Benchmark. “Since then, Elance-oDesk has gone on to prove the demand for a global platform for online work, and its continued growth keeps us excited about the opportunity they’re creating for freelancers and businesses everywhere.”

"The new round of investment in Elance-oDesk would seem to indicate strong investor confidence in the post-merger entity and its approach to the emerging platform-intermediated labor space," according to Andrew Karpie, affiliate analyst at Staffing Industry Analysts.

“The space is currently a very innovative, heterogeneous one with a broad range of mostly small players, pursuing many different models for affecting work arrangements via online platforms,” Karpie said. “Elance-oDesk seems also to maintain an innovative streak, even at large scale, as it has extended its main 'online marketplace' offering with other innovative directions including Private Talent Cloud for enterprises and platform complementor relationships with online learning, testing, and other service providers.”

In its 2014 Annual Impact Report released today, Elance-oDesk reports the company has 9.3 million freelancers that earn more than $900 million annually.

Elance-oDesk has offices in the US and Europe and now operates in 180 countries. It ranks No. 29 on Staffing Industry Analysts’ list of largest US staffing and talent engagement firms.