Founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch has gained popularity as a technology news and analysis website in last few years. In fact, known for breaking technology news and with deep investigative skills, the TechCrunch blog has become a source of information for many other online publications. According to tracking company FeedBurner, as of February 2010, it has over 4,563,000 RSS feed subscribers, per Wikipedia information.

Now, Associated Press reports that Arrington, who sold TechCrunch to AOL for $25 million nearly a year ago, is leaving the popular technology blog, as well as AOL, to start a new venture capital (VC) firm.

Associated Press wrote that when Arrington and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced the acquisition last September, the TechCrunch founder said at the time that he expected to stay with the company for at least three years.

Also, in a press statement, AOL spokeswoman Maureen Sullivan said, “The TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future.”

With this new development, Sullivan said, “Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund,” wrote Associated Press.

According to the Associated Press report, Arrington started his venture capital firm with an initial $20 million investment. Its investors include AOL as well as venture capital firms such as Greylock partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

As per the report, the new replacement is Erick Schonfeld, who joined TechCrunch in 2007 after spending 14 years covering startups and technology news. Before joining TechCrunch team, his last job was at Business 2.0.

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