Less than a year after being valued at $5 billion, Pinterest has joined the 11-digit valuation startup club.
Pinterest, an online scrapbooking service, disclosed on Monday that it raised about $367 million in a new round of financing from new and existing investors. It valued the company at $11 billion, putting the startup in roughly the same range as the Silicon Valley darling Dropbox and the data analysis company Palantir Technologies.
In a regulatory filing, Pinterest disclosed that it could raise as much as $211 million in additional financing, bringing its potential haul to $578 million. That would be on top of the $764 million that the nearly 5-year-old company has raised in previous rounds.
The latest round highlights the investment world’s continuing infatuation with Pinterest - essentially a community image-bookmarking site where users can store pictures to any number of online boards run by them or others. Existing investors include the venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, and the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten.
Interest has been so ardent that the startup has nearly tripled its valuation in just about a year and a half.
Pinterest has shown strides in expanding and developing revenue, especially with so-called promoted pins that advertisers can buy.
Advertising will continue to be a main focus this year, company executives have said.
A spokesman for Pinterest said in a statement that the company planned to use the money for a number of corporate moves, including a big international push. Already, the number of users abroad has jumped, rising to more than 40 percent of customers last year, compared with 28 percent in 2013.
-2015 New York Times News Service
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