Pinterest raises $200 million at a $5B valuation

Pinterest has now raised $764 millon in total funding

For a company that is just now starting to make some money, Pinterest is really rolling in the dough.

The company has just raised another $200 million in Series F funding, at a valuation of $5 billion, the company has confirmed to VatorNews. The new money came from Pinterest's existing investors SV Angel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, and Valiant Capital Partners.

Pinterest's three previously rounds of funding have all been $100 million or more: it raised $100 million in May of 2012; then another $200 million in February 2013; and finally a $225 million round of funding in October of last year.

In total, the company has raised $764 million in funding since being founded in 2009.

"Pinterest has a vision of solving discovery and helping everyone find things they'll love. This new investment gives us additional resources to realize our vision," Pinterest co-founder and CEO, Ben Silbermann, said in a statement provided to VatorNews.

The company tells us that it will use the funding for three purposes:

• Discovery: Continuing to invest in technology and talent to develop Pinterest into a discovery platform, building on the recent Guided Search announcement.

• Growth: Pinterest is now available in 31 countries, growing international users to 30% of the total and steadily increasing each month. It has international offices in the UK, France and Japan and plan to open more offices to reach pinners and partners locally.

• Monetization: Further developing its advertising program into a global platform for businesses of all sizes. Its recent Promoted Pins announcement is the latest example of its progress 

The most impressive thing about the company's amazing success is that it has just started to make money with Promoted Pins.

Pinterest first revealed the promoted pin effort all the way back in September of last year. They work the same as any other type of pin, except they have a label at the bottom that denoted that they are "promoted." It also contains a link to learn more about what that means.

Pinterest began to roll them out in October and they were, apparently, successful enough that brands are willing to plunk down money for them, as Pinterest announced partnerships with 12 brands, including Nestle, Banana Republic and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, earlier this week.

While still in the early stages, investors obviously have a lot of confidence in the company's ability to make money, and probably for good reason. Pinterest has an advantage over other networks: people already use it specifically to find new goods to buy. That gives the network multiple different potential revenue streams.

For example, it is not hard to see Pinterest eventually partnering with brands to become an e-commcerce platform and actually selling goods directly from the site.

This news was first reported by ReadWrite on Thursday.

(Image source: whydraw.com/pinterest)