The tech world may be abuzz about Twitter, but a big new social network is showing that it’s no slouch.
Pinterest confirmed on Wednesday that it had raised $225 million in a new round of financing that values the company at $3.8 billion.
The round was led by Fidelity, a new investor, and included existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and Valiant Capital Partners.
That’s quite the haul for 2013: the company disclosed in February that it had reaped $200 million.
And it reflects just how quickly the three-year-old social network â€" a virtual scrapbook where users post and share pictures and other media â€" is growing, at least in terms of estimated worth. AllThingsD, which first reported the latest financing round on Wednesday, noted that the last fund-raising was done at a $2.5 billion valuation.
By comparison, two years ago Pinterest raised $27 million at a $200 million valuation, AllThingsD reported at the time.
Compare that trajectory to Twitter’s, whose valuation jumped from $200,000 in July 2007 to $3.6 billion in December 2010, according to Pitchbook. In the prospectus for its forthcoming initial public offering, the company said that as of August, it valued itself at nearly $13 billion.
Pinterest’s co-founder and chief executive, Ben Silbermann, said in a statement: “We hope to be a service that everyone uses to inspire their future, whether that’s dinner tomorrow night, a vacation next summer, or a dream house someday. This new investment enables us to pursue that goal even more aggressively.â€
What that encompasses, according to the company, are a number of things. Among them is international growth, which has topped 125 percent since the beginning of the year. Pinterest has opened up shop in Britain, France and Italy and aims to begin operating in 10 more countries by year’s end.
The company also aims to bolster its mobile services, which it says have grown 50 percent so far this year. And it plans to invest in advertising, since until recently the social network ran no ads. It recently unveiled tests of advertising in the form of “promoted pins†earlier this month.
