Back in 2010, a little start-up called Pinterest managed to raise $500k from angel investors to get it going. By October 2013, the amount of investment it was capable of raising had soared through the stratosphere to a surreal $225 million – and now it’s broken even that record, having just released a filing that confirms it’s raised a staggering $367 million more.
And it’s not stopping there: Pinterest is making it clear that with this part of the Series G funding round in the bag, they’re open to raising a further $211 million before they bring it to a close. That will bring the Series G grand total to a mindboggling $577,916,906. In other words, over half a billion dollars in a single bound. Not bad for a project that began life as a modest social discovery tool that relied on curating user-generated content to inspire others to try out new stuff.
The rise and rise of Pinterest has been little short of jaw-dropping in its audacity and pace. Angel funding of $500k may seem modest, but a year-and-a-half later the company had succeeded in raising a mighty $10 million in Series A. That was in May 2011. By October of the same year, it had raised another $27 million in Series B.
But these sums were soon to look like beer money. In May 2012, a Series C round brought in a further $100 million, while in February 2013 a titanic $200 million was raised in Series D. Six months later in October 2013, investors were falling over one another to stuff a further $225 million in Pinterest’s coffers.
With this week’s news, the firm has, in eight rounds of investment, raised a total of $762.5 million from 21 investors. And once the Series G finally closes, the total raised will have broken the $1 billion mark.
When TechCrunch journalist Greg Kumparak approached Pinterest to enquire as to its current valuation this week, it blithely confirmed that it now sits at a cool $11 billion. The new funding, it says, will be used, amongst other things to “fuel international expansion.”
Is it just me, or is that a lot of expansion?
