Another big VC round snuck into the top 10 deals of 2014 in the nick of time: Snapchat raised $486 million at a valuation of $10 billion, it said in a filing on New Year’s Eve.
Southern California-based Snapchat is a mobile app that allows users to send messages that self-destruct in seconds. The company was founded in 2011, and in late 2013 turned down a billion acquisition offer from Facebook.
The filing did not name the 23 investors in the round, but the Wall Street Journal says the investors included Yahoo and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Reports about the mega round (and the $10 billion valuation) had been circulating for months. We’ve noted that the WSJ reported a few months ago that Yahoo was considering a $20 million investment.
As Heather Somerville wrote last week after Instacart snagged $220 million in funding, 2014 was a big-deal kind of year. Among the top 10 companies that raked in the private bucks: Uber, Airbnb and Dropbox, all based in San Francisco.
