UPDATED 23:34 EST / MARCH 11 2015

NEWS

Snapchat raises yet another round, this time its $200m Series E from Alibaba on a $15b valuation

snapchat nyeThe money never seems to stop for chat application Snapchat Inc. with news today that they’re taking a new round from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Bloomberg Business has the scoop and claims the round is $200 million Series E on a $15 billion valuation.

Reports surfaced in February that Snapchat was looking to raise $500 million on a $16-19 billion valuation, along with ambitions to acquire Taylor Swift’s record company Big Machine Records LLC. It’s not clear whether Snapchat couldn’t raise the $500 million, or this deal is separate to those negotiations (i.e: they might still be trying to raise the $500 million as well.) The new round likely won’t allow Snapchat to shake it up and acquire Big Machine Records, which is believed to have a price tag on it of around $350 million.

Snapchat’s user numbers have been going gangbusters since launching in September 2011 and as of August 2014 they had 100 million active monthly users with 700 million snaps being sent each day. Famously it turned down an acquisition offer of $3 billion by Facebook Inc. in November 2013.

In January 2015 it launched its “Discover” service, a curated content service that pitched itself as a place where “editors and artists, not clicks and shares determine what’s important” and yet provided content from The Daily Mail and People. The service has though been well received, and there are even reports Wednesday that they want to expand the service into live sports streaming.

The move away from pure disappearing messaging chat service to a hybrid quasi-media company actually makes some sense from a pure business perspective: the reason Snapchat has to keep raising money is because (surprise!) it isn’t currently making any.

The new round will take total funding in Snapchat to $848 million over 7 rounds from investors Benchmark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SV Angel, Institutional Venture Partners, and others.

More importantly though the valuation means Snapchat will keep up with the Jones’ of the tech world, or as some may suggest the list of the most over-valued tech startups. Snapchat remains third behind Xiaomi Corp. and Uber Inc., who have valuations of $45 billion and $40 billion respectively.


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