Messaging platform Snapchat, which spurned a US$3bn acquisition offer from Facebook and is caught up in a legal spat with an alleged original co-founder, has raised US$50m in a Series C private equity round.
The single investor is private equity firm Coatue Management. An analysis by VCE experts values Snapchat at around US$2bn.
Coatue Management has previously invested in travel app Hotel Tonight and cloud storage player Box.
Snapchat completed a US$60m funding round six months ago and rumours have be flying that the company was plotting a massive US$200m round.
The service is all the rage amongst teenagers who can use the app to take photos, record videos, add text and send them to a list of recipients. Users can set a time limit for how long the recipients can view the snaps, typically up to 10 seconds, after which they promptly disappear for good.
Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy started the company in 2011 at Stanford University in California. In February of this year, a former classmate of Spiegel and Murphy, Frank Reginald Brown, began a legal action against them, claiming he originally conceived the Snapchat concept and designed the ghost logo.
It has also emerged in recent months that Snapchat photos do not disappear and can be retrieved after the time limit expires using basic hack techniques.
Despite being valued at US$2bn, the service has yet to bring in any revenue.
Selfie image via Shutterstock
