Evernote valued at US$1bn after raising US$70m financing

3 May 2012

Cloud player Evernote has raised US$70m in a funding round led by Meritech Capital and CBC Capital that values it at more than US$1bn. The company’s CEO Phil Libin says the round brings Evernote a “step closer to our long-term goal of building a hundred-year start-up that can be everyone’s second brain.”

Evernote already has close to US$100m in the bank from previous funding rounds involving Sequoia, Morgenthaler Ventures, Docomo Capital and others.

Evernote is an innovative service that allows users to type, snap and record information and synchronise it in the cloud and access via numerous devices be they Android smartphones, iPhones, iPads, PCs or Macs.

“We took this financing not because we need the money to fund operations, but because we see building our financial infrastructure to be a crucial component of remaining an innovative and durable company,” Libin said in Evernote’s blog.

“We’ll use the money to ramp the speed of product improvements, expand internationally, and make future strategic acquisitions.

“Most importantly, we wanted to have the resources on hand to ensure that we don’t get distracted by anything for the next several years; whatever happens in the economy or the market, we can stay 100pc focused on building the best products and providing the best user experience,” Libin said.

The service, which compete’s with Microsoft’s OneNote, went into open beta in June 2008 and by July 2011 had 11m users.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com