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Snapchat snags $54M in latest funding round

New forms filed with the SEC confirms that the app for disappearing picture and video messages has secured $54.5 million in new funding.

Jennifer Van Grove Former Senior Writer / News
Jennifer Van Grove covered the social beat for CNET. She loves Boo the dog, CrossFit, and eating vegan. Her jokes are often in poor taste, but her articles are not.
Jennifer Van Grove
2 min read
Snapchat

Ephemeral messaging startup Snapchat has raised $50 million in equity financing from two investors, according to a new form D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Update, Monday, February 3, 2013 at 11:58 a.m. PT: The original filing was amended to show a total raise of $54.5 million.

The Series C raise is a magnitude of millions lower than the $200 million number originally bandied about in earlier reports, but it does fall in line with a filing that was unearthed last week. That filing also suggested a valuation of $2 billion.

Snapchat did not immediately return a request for comment.

The December raise follows Snapchat's last financing round just six months ago. At the time, Snapchat raised $60 million at a pre-money valuation of $800 million in its Series B round. Since then, the company has grown to processes more than 400 million "snaps" -- aka messages -- per day and is believed to be a big hit with tweens and teens. As such, Snapchat has become the belle of the social ball with suitors such as Facebook and Google reportedly willing to spend between $3 billion and $4 billion for a chance to possess the most coveted startup around.

The new money also comes as Snapchat contends with an increasingly hostile lawsuit. Snapchat, its co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, and the company's investors are being sued by Spiegel's former friend Reggie Brown for a one-third stake in the application Brown claims to have invented on his own in early 2011.