BackPinterest raises $367 million, joins the billion-dollar start-up club
According to 'The Wall Street Journal', the amount raised increases the valuation of the company to $11 billion
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On Monday, popular social discovery and photo-sharing site—Pinterest—raised $367 million in its latest round of funding, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), making it one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the world.
According to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the amount raised increases the valuation of the company to $11 billion. The company, in a statement cited by AFP, said that besides the $367 million in primary funding, it “may raise as much as an additional $211 million." In May 2014, Pinterest closed a round of funding which raised $200 million.
The current round of funding, which included new and previous investors, also makes the five-year old, San Francisco-based Pinterest the sixth-most valuable venture-backed start-up. China-based mobile company Xiaomi Inc. heads the list with a valuation of $46 billion.
The company intends to use the additional capital to “fuel international expansion," the statement added. Pinterest witnessed phenomenal growth in its international userbase in 2014—135%, making up more than 40% of its user base today, compared with 28% in 2013.
Increased investor interest and confidence in Pinterest follows on the heels of mobile photo messaging app Snapchat’s $200 million fund raising from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, propelling its valuation to $15 billion.
Social networking site Facebook, which is now a listed company following its initial public offering in 2012, is currently valued at $219.52 billion in market capitalization.
Facebook, now a listed company, is currently valued at $219.52 billion after market capitalization. Likewise, Twitter, which went public in November 2013, is valued today at $29.60 billion (market cap).
According to BofA Meryll Lynch analysts Justin Post and Joyce Train, photo-sharing app Instagram is now worth $37 billion. Instagram was purchased by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. The app, currently the largest social network outside of China, has 300 million active users, nearly a twelve-fold increase from April 2012, when it had only 27 million users per month.
Likewise, messaging app WhatsApp, purchased by Facebook in 2013 for $4 billion, has been valued at $13-32 billion. In January 2015, WhatsApp co-founder and chief executive officer Jan Koum announced that the messaging app had more than 700 million active users, with 30 billion messages being sent out every day.
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