Twitter is privately raising a new financing round that values the company as high as $7 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
The new valuation is much higher than expected because Twitter had a considerably smaller valuation of $3.7 billion back in December. That funding round was led by Perkins Caufield & Byers, but there’s no word yet on who’s throwing money in this time.
The valuation jump could be due to a more favorable environment for Internet and tech companies going public with strong valuations. Companies such as Zynga and Groupon have recently filed for IPOs with large valuations, while LinkedIn already has gone public with an $8.5 billion valuation and Pandora went public with a $3 billion estimate.
Twitter, unlike the aforementioned companies, has expressed no interest in filing an IPO at present. The Journal suggests the service needs time to figure out its business model and start earning a profit before it can go public.
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