AppNexus has been valued at over $1.2 billion

The New York ad tech community has a billion-dollar company at last, and it’s Brian O’Kelley’s AppNexus after all. Weeks after rumors linked Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba to an investments, AppNexus has announced a new late-stage funding round that values the company at $1.2 billion, nearly doubling the valuation of the company from its last fund raise in January of 2013. The funding comes from an unnamed public equity firm in Boston, with an additional $40 million in room allocated for other investors, many of them strategic partners and existing investors, to join in a second close. The valuation is “clean,” says O’Kelley, AppNexus’ cofounder and CEO, meaning it does not have the preferences and downside protections that many late-stage investors favor. Those terms can often encourage inflated valuations as investors are guaranteed their money back and often more, regardless of what happens to the company in the future. “We needed to be able to go to companies and say, we are as good as a public equity. We can’t disclose our investor, but these guys don’t play games. It’s a clean, real valuation we can take to the bank and use to acquire companies and show employees the incredible value of our stock.”