Pinterest Valued at $2.5 Billion in Latest Funding Round

Online photo- and content-sharing service Pinterest has raised $200 million in a funding round that values the privately held company at $2.5 billion, up from $1.5 billion in spring 2012, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

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While it still remains unclear how Pinterest will bring in revenue over time, its valuation is now above the stock market value of social gaming firm Zynga and online music service Pandora Media. Zynga's Wednesday closing price gave it a market value of $2.4 billion, while Pandora finished the day with a market cap of $2.06 billion.

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The funding round, which will allow the company to hire more staff and develop its business model, also makes San Francisco-based Pinterest one of the most valuable venture capital-backed, private Internet firms, according to Bloomberg.

Microblogging service Twitter recently was valued at about $9 billion, file-sharing service Dropbox previously raised money at a $4 billion valuation, and room-sharing site Airbnb raised money late last year at a valuation of about $2.5 billion, it said.

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The latest Pinterest funding was led by Valiant Capital Management. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital also contributed.

The company's web site attracted 48 million visits in December, up from 9 million a year earlier, according to comScore.

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai