Pinterest Raises More Money, Fetching a Valuation of $5
Billion
The business of online scrapbooking is getting more valuable
— at least in the eyes of investors.
Pinterest said on Thursday that it has raised $200 million
in a new round of fund-raising, at a valuation of $5 billion. At that level,
the social network has joined the upper echelons of the start-up hierarchy.
The money will come from existing investors: SV Angel,
Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital and
Valiant Capital Partners.
Despite some tremors in the market for newly public
start-ups, the darlings of the venture capital world have little trouble
drawing investor interest. Companies like the home-sharing site Airbnb, the
file storage giant Dropbox and the data analysis specialist Palantir have
attained valuations approaching or exceeding $10 billion.
Such companies have been eager to draw in as much money as
possible, while investors are still in a giving mood.
Now, Pinterest is joining the ranks of the start-up
superstars. Its latest fund-raising round arrives only six months after the
social network raised $225 million at a $3.8 billion valuation.
All told, Pinterest has raised $764 million in six rounds of
financing.
During that time, the company has expanded its ambitions
beyond simply being a repository for users’ saved images, known as pins. It has
finally rolled out advertising in the form of “promoted pins” from the likes of
Kraft, General Mills and the Gap.
But Pinterest is also no longer content to simply serve as a
collection of virtual scrapbooks, no matter how large. (In this case, that’s
750 million user boards featuring 30 billion pins.) It has been building out a
search platform that lets users find images based on keywords.
If users search for plants, for example, they will be given
guides to help them narrow down their selections like indoor varieties.
“Pinterest has a vision of solving discovery and helping
everyone find things they’ll love,” Ben Silbermann, the company’s co-founder
and chief executive, said in a statement. “This new investment gives us
additional resources to realize our vision.”
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