Rakuten, the largest e-commerce site in Japan, is expected to be the lead investor in the much-contested next round of funding for Silicon Valley’s hottest start-up, Pinterest.
The funding is expected to be announced tomorrow morning. The Tokyo-based Internet giant will invest upwards of $50 million in a $100 million round that values the social bookmarking phenom at $1.5 billion.
There are other investors in the new round, but those were still to be determined tonight by Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann. ...AllThings D 5/16/2012 [en]
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- Rakuten has acquired many EC sites around the world including Buy.com of US and PriceMinister of France, but it is not a usual case to invest to take minority share for non-EC service. Rakuten does not seem to take full advantage of social networking service so far. It would not be so easy to create its anticipated effective synergy with Pinterest.
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