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Snapchat celebrates the New Year with $485.6 million Series D round
Snapchat Inc. has some extra reasons to celebrate the new year with news that they have raised $485.6 million in a Series D round supported by 23 undisclosed investors.
The new round brings total funding for the startup to a total of $611 million reported Circa. Previous investors include Benchmark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SV Angel, Institutional Venture Partners and Chinese media and tech giant Tencent Inc.
Rumors circulated in October that Yahoo Inc. could be investing $20 million with the company on a $10 billion valuation; it’s unknown at this stage if Yahoo participated.
Snapchat famously turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook Inc. in November 2013, and is also believed to have had other unsolicited offers from China’s Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
The messaging app with disappearing photos and videos (messages automatically self-destruct so to speak 1-10 seconds after being viewed) has seen serious growth since launching in September 2011 and as of August 2014 had 100 million active monthly users with 700 million snaps being sent each daily.
Snapchat has also dabbled into related user services, including in October 2014 Snapcash, a peer-to-peer payments service powered by Square Inc. that allows users send it other users.
It hasn’t been all plain sailing though, with an API exploit exposing user details and passwords in January 2014 and an FTC investigation that ended with a settlement in December 2014, which found that Snapchat deceived consumers over the amount of personal data it collected and the security measures taken to protect that data from misuse and unauthorized disclosure.
As Snapchat has not officially confirmed the round (the details come from a regulatory filing) it’s not clear how the messaging company will use the funding, but it is possible part of the funds could be used for news acquisitions; Snapchat acquired Vergence Labs Inc. in December ($15m,) scanning company Scan Inc. also in December ($50m,) and in May AddLive Inc. ($35m.)
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