Update | Snapchat in funding talks with Alibaba at US$10b value
Snapchat Inc. is in talks with investors including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. for a round of financing that may value the company at US$10 billion, people with knowledge of the situation said.
Snapchat Inc., the company that makes a mobile application for disappearing photo messages, is in talks with investors including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. for a round of financing that may value the company at US$10 billion, people with knowledge of the situation said.
The talks are ongoing and the terms of the funding may change, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
If the funding is completed, Snapchat would join a small group of technology startups that are valued in the eleven-digit range. Amid a Silicon Valley financing boom, companies including house-sharing app Airbnb Inc. and file-sharing company Dropbox Inc. have raised money at US$10 billion valuations. In June, car- booking app Uber Technolgies Inc. raised US$1.2 billion at a record-breaking valuation of US$17 billion.
Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman for Alibaba, declined to comment, as did Mary Ritti, a spokeswoman for Venice, California-based Snapchat.
Snapchat’s popularity has continued to grow, with people sending more than 700 million disappearing “snaps” a day and more than 500 million stories viewed daily, the company has said. It now competes with Facebook Inc., which tried to buy Snapchat for US$3 billion last year and started its own product to send ephemeral photos and videos after being rebuffed.
Snapchat said in May it was adding an option for users to chat with text, joining an increasingly crowded mobile-messaging market that also attracted Facebook. The social network agreed to pay about US$19 billion for WhatsApp Inc. in February.
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