Send-it-and-forget-it mobile application Snapchat has raised $60 million in funding at an $800 million pre-money valuation, the company confirmed to CNET.
In the age of the digital permanent record, Snapchat has skyrocketed to fame, and now fortune, by proffering disposable social media moments. The company's 2-year-old application, all the rage with youngsters, lets users send photos and videos to friends that disappear within seconds. The application is now seeing more than 200 million "snaps" every day, the company said.
"In order to continue scaling while developing the Snapchat experience, we needed to build a bigger engineering team and figure out how to pay our server bills," the startup said in a blog post Monday announcing the funding round. "Long story short -- we're committed to building a big company around an innovative and fun product."
Snapchat's latest cash infusion was supplied by lead investor Institutional Venture Partners. General Catalyst, Benchmark Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and SV Angel also participated in the round. To date, the startup has raised close to $75 million, a rather remarkable feat for a little company that debuted in September 2011.
(via AllThingsD)