Pinterest pops a $12.3bn valuation after raising $150m

7 Jun 2017

Pinterest app on a smartphone. Image: I AM NIKOM/Shutterstock

Pinterest is one of the few privately held start-ups valued at more than $10bn to raise money this year.

Pinterest has been valued at $12.3bn after raising $150m in fresh funding.

The funding is understood to have come from the company’s existing investors.

Pinterest’s last fundraising round was in April 2015, following which the company was valued at $11bn.

‘We hope to grow our presence in Dublin over time’
– ADELE COOPER

The latest round comes at a tough funding time for unicorns – start-ups valued north of $1bn – and makes Pinterest one of the few in the rarified $10bn club to raise any money this year at all.

Pinterest is a social media platform that lets users ‘pin’ items of interest, from art and home décor to fashion, food, furniture, technology and more.

The company was started in 2009 by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp, modelled on the idea of a scrapbook for things that you love and are influenced by.

It is understood that, now, more than 175m people worldwide use the site every month to collect and post images.

The San Francisco-headquartered company is understood to be targeting revenue of more than $500m this year.

Investors still pin hopes on an IPO

The company has been an IPO favourite for some time now, but has still to go public.

In the meantime, younger companies, such as Snap, have gone public, while other photo-based platform Instagram has achieved 700m users and Google has launched a rival image-based shopping platform.

Pinterest is understood to be planning to use this latest investment to improve its computer vision and visual search systems, developing its Lens camera search function, which searches Pinterest based on pictures users take with their smartphones.

In Ireland, about 200,000 pins are saved every day across various categories.

Globally, Pinterest boasts more than 100bn Ppins and more than 2bn boards. 80pc of users access the platform via a mobile device.

In 2015, Irish woman Adele Cooper left Facebook to take up the role of head of Pinterest in London.

In a recent interview, the Stanford and Harvard graduate told Siliconrepublic.com that, when it comes to boots on the ground, Pinterest already employs 10 people in Dublin in a variety of roles, including account management, community operations and finance.

“We hope to grow our presence in Dublin over time,” she said.

Pinterest app on a smartphone. Image: I AM NIKOM/Shutterstock

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

editorial@siliconrepublic.com