Alibaba Contributed $200 Million For Snapchat Fundraiser

Alibaba is one of the major investors of Snapchat, the photo messaging app, prior to its IPO in the upcoming times.

Alibaba Group Holding is one of the biggest businesses in the world that has disrupted the Chinese tech sector. Also, it is constantly tapping the United States market as well; hence, either it is supporting some company, opening an online website of interior designs, or investing in startups or other companies. For that matter, it is known for investing in a photo-messaging app, Snapchat, which is popular for showing people’s images for a certain amount of seconds, recently raised $650 million. A major chunk of investment comes from Alibaba.

Snapchat is a Los Angeles (LA) based startup that has scheduled its initial public offering (IPO) in the coming times. The company has managed to raise a staggering amount of $538 million from a funding round already, as stated by Security and Exchange Commission filing. The company is engaged in raising a huge amount for its upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO) for a few months now. According to Financial Times, it is said that Alibaba Group invested $200 million, which increased the market value of the photo-messaging app to $15 billion. However, people familiar with the matter said that the final evaluated value might rise.

It is believed that according to the Security and Exchange Commission filing, the name list of other investors, apart from Alibaba, are not disclosed, but the current existing investors that have been a part of the company includes Yahoo, Benchmark, IVP, Coatue Management, and Kleiner Perkins. The substantial fundraising came when the chief executive and co-founder of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, warned this week that the technology industry could be overvalued. He said, “I think there will be a correction.” He further explained that when the time will be near, he would put in a lot of money to make it happen.

Mr. Evan Spiegel already planned to go public with his company despite of the fact that the business is still not mature enough in the market. This is the time where all tech companies and giants are preferring to remain private for as long as they can, but according to the co-founder of Snapchat, IPO is really important for any company. Furthermore, he explained that the plan is to remain independent rather than acquired or purchased by any other big company, such as Facebook, who recently planned to buy out the photo-messaging app.

Prior to its IPO in the coming times, Snapchat has hired Imran Khan as the chief strategy officer, who also helped and led Alibaba to a record IPO last year.