Pinterest, the US-based social network backed by e-commerce company Rakuten, has raised $367.1m in new funding, according to a regulatory filing yesterday.
Investors in the series G round, which Pinterest told technology news source Mashable valued it at $11bn, include venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, both of which are existing investors.
Pinterest operates an image-based microblogging platform through which users can ‘pin’ pictures that inspire them to a personal ‘board’, while also viewing each other’s boards, in essence making it an online scrapbooking network.
The round, which could eventually reach $577.9m according to the filing, lifted Pinterest’s overall funding to $1.13bn. It follows a $200m series F round raised in May 2014 at a $5bn valuation.
The increase in valuation is due to several factors, the first being the expansion in Pinterest’s international use base, which the company said increased more than 135% during 2014 and which now make up more than 40% of its users.
A second is that Pinterest has begun to sell advertising on its site, releasing its first ‘promoted pin’ in January. Pinterest’s focus on images and consumerism makes it a valuable platform for advertisers to not only target their marketing more effectively but also to potentially research links between products that could make them easier to sell.
Bessemer, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments, FirstMark Capital and Valiant Capital Partners have each invested in both the series F round and Pinterest’s $225m series E in 2013.
Rakuten was one of the participants in Pinterest’s $100m series C round in 2012, while the company’s other backers include SV Angel, which led the series F round, Slow Ventures and various angel investors.
“Pinterest will use the additional capital for corporate purposes, including to fuel international expansion,” a Pinterest representative told Mashable.