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.