Pinterest, a visual search engine where people "pin" images of things they're interested in, just raised $200 million.
The deal values the company at $5 billion, sources tell ReadWrite. We reached out to Pinterest, who confirmed the deal.
"Pinterest has a vision of solving discovery and helping everyone find things they'll love," cofounder and CEO said in a statement. "This new investment gives us additional resources to realize our vision."
The company raised $200 million in February 2013 and another $225 million in October.
As ReadWrite points out:
This frequent fundraising will likely raise eyebrows, given concerns over sky-high valuations for private Internet companies. But the San Francisco-based startup plays a unique role in a trend we call the Visual Web—the shift of Web consumption, creation, and commerce from text to images. And it faces a very well-funded competitor in Google.
Just last week, the company was valued at $3.8 billion. The social network controls 23% of referral traffic to e-commerce sites. That, plus the promise of paid advertising on the horizon, makes it seem that Pinterest is in a good spot to actually justify its valuation.
Pinterest has raised a total of $764 million.
