Last year, Snapchat decided Facebook’s $3 billion offer wasn’t cool. You know what’s cool? $10 billion.
The Venice Beach start-up, whose app enables users to send photos and videos that disappear seconds after they’re viewed, is reportedly in talks with investors, including Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holding, for a funding round that would value the company at $10 billion.
The discussions are ongoing and terms could change, according to a Bloomberg report, which cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the situation.
If a deal happens, it would be vindication for Snapchat, which spurned hefty takeover offers from Facebook and Google to the bewilderment of tech watchers. Google reportedly bid $4 billion for the mobile messaging app.
Snapchat executives insisted then that they were in it for the long run, not to sell out and turn over the reins.
Snapchat would be the latest tech start-up to net a sky-high 11-figure valuation despite little to show on the financial side: Although users now send more than 700 million “snaps” a day, Snapchat has little to no revenue and no profit.
Still, a $10 billion valuation for Snapchat “is consistent with where the market is today,” said TX Zhuo, managing partner at Karlin Ventures in Los Angeles.
For its part, Snapchat chief executive Evan Spiegel has insisted that the company has a long revenue-building road map ahead of it that includes plans for in-app purchases and advertising.
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