Snapchat may soon be the third most-valuable startup in the
world, behind Uber and China’s Xiaomi.
Bloomberg is reporting that the mobile photo platform is
seeking $500 million at a $16-19 billion valuation, and that it’s speaking with
fund managers to close the new round.
The app raised $485 million late last year from a slew of
investors, according to an SEC filing. This would bring the company’s total
amount raised to more than $1 billion.
The funding report comes on the heels of another rumor: that
Snapchat wants to buy an expensive record label, Big Machine, which could cost
an estimated $350 million. Big Machine represents Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel’s
former fling, Taylor Swift.
Since its founding in 2011, Snapchat’s growth has continued
to be strong. It could be approaching 200 million monthly active users and it
has tens of millions of daily active users. In leaked emails between Spiegel
and his board member Mitch Lasky, Spiegel revealed that Snapchat was
approaching Twitter’s mobile scale. “We have reached abnormal levels of
growth,” Spiegel wrote.
Snapchat has so many users, it’s not just a startup in
growth mode anymore. It’s trying to become a full-on platform, the same way
Facebook expanded beyond profiles to things like Groups, Search and NewsFeed.
In January, Snapchat rolled out Discover, a partnership with a few major news
sites, to publish content and videos on the app.
Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
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