Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins has lead a recent round of financing for Snapchat that managed to put more than $485 million into the company’s pockets. Driven by the it’s self-named, extremely popular ephemeral messaging app, Snapchat is now valued at somewhere around $10 billion, significantly more than its $400 million valuation back in 2013.
Back in the day, we reported that messaging app Snapchat* was raising over $100 million in a round led by Kleiner Perkins. And then the WSJ reported that it was $20 million, which left us wondering why a growth round would be so small in terms of total principle. Well, it turns out it’s not. Snapchat has raised a much bigger amount: Nearly $500 million in aggregate, according to an SEC filing that it slipped out as the working day for New Years Eve was drawing to a close. The filing notes that 23 investors took part, although it’s not clear from the SEC document who led the round. Here is what happened, according to our sources: Snapchat originally set out to raise $40 million, but demand for the round skyrocketed, and it decided to shoot for an ambitious $900 million instead. When that didn’t work out, it dialled it back to $500 million. Rumor has it that Kleiner is leading this latest round, with GIC, Yahoo and maybe wildcards August Capital participating. Portions of that, such as the Yahoo part of the fundraise, closed some time ago. The SEC filing notes that the date of first sale was in April 2014.
