Check-in cha-ching: Foursquare raises $50M with a $600M valuation

Location-based social network Foursquare closed a new $50 million round of funding, the company reported today.

Foursquare said it will use the new funding to hire additional engineers, grow its merchant platform and expand internationally.

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“The opportunity to build something meaningful in the location space is HUGE, and we feel well-positioned to capitalize on it,” co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai wrote on the company’s blog.

TechCrunch is reporting Foursquare’s valuation at $600 million — with additional rumors putting the valuation as high as $1 billion.

The new round, which was led by Andreessen-Horowitz, includes funding from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Foursquare raised a $20 million round last year and received angel funding in the fall of 2009. The company has raised a total of $71.4 million to date.

The New York-based startup has added more than 70 employees to the company and more than 10 million new users to its service in the last two years.