Picsart, a photo and video editing app, was valued at over $1 billion on Thursday after SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $130 million funding round in the San Francisco-based company.
Venture capital firms GSquared and Tribe Capital also took part in the Series C round, along with existing investors Sequoia Capital, DCM, Graph and Siguler Guff.
With more than 150 million monthly active users spanning 180 countries, Picsart has raised $195 million in capital since its launch in 2012 and recorded more than $100 million in annual revenue run rate.
Picsart was also among the top 20 apps in terms of worldwide downloads on Google Play in the first quarter of 2021, according to a report by data analytics firm SensorTower.
“The creative economy is here to stay,” Serena Dayal, investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisors, told Reuters in an interview. She has also joined the company’s board.
Picsart said funds raised from the latest round will be used for acquisitions, developing user tools and for expanding its artificial intelligence-driven technology.
It has more than 800 employees across cities including New York, Bangalore, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo and Yerevan.
“Picsart is expanding our global offices throughout the next year,” Meagan Kirkpatrick, head of communications at Picsart, told Reuters.
“Among them, we’ll be hiring in the UK, Canada, Japan, and India, Germany, and the U.S.”
The company plans to hire up to 100 employees for its India operations. Currently, there are about a dozen employees spread across two hubs in the country.
Reuters