Pinterest Wins $200 Million in New Funding at a $5 Billion Valuation

Pinterest has raised a new $200 million round of funding that gives it a valuation of $5 billion, the photo pin-up site said on Thursday.

Pinterest, which allows users to create online bulletin boards based on various themes such as travel, decorating, or sports, said in a statement it would use the capital to invest in technology, develop its advertising program further, and expand internationally.

Pinterest said it raised money from existing investors SV Angel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, and Valiant Capital Partners.

The company last raised money in October 2013 at a $3.8 billion valuation in a round led by Fidelity Investments.

News of the funding round was first reported by ReadWrite. Pinterest said it has raised a total of $764 million so far from the time of inception.

Pinterest in late-April announced a new milestone for the company, and also discussed its growth over the past six months, at an event at the company's headquarters in San Francisco.

The visual discovery tool firm's CEO, Ben Silbermann, had announced Pinterest has garnered more than 30 billion user-contributed Pins since the service's launch. According to Silbermann, the number of user-contributed Pins grew by nearly 50 percent in the past six months, with users also creating more than 750 million boards in the same period.

Pinterest's CEO said much of the growth in user contributed Pins can be attributed to last year's release of the Related Pins feature. Techcrunch cited Silbermann at the announcement to say that currently, more than 90 percent of Pins have Related Pins connected to them. Silbermann added that users 'repinning' Related Pins has also grown by 20 percent.

Written with inputs from Reuters