SoundCloud has raised a new fundraising round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The amount was not released but TechCrunch understands it to be $50 million. This would give the company a $200 million pre-money valuation. GGV Capital also participated in this round. The social sound platform which has seen high growth in the past year will use the funding to expand more rapidly, especially in the US.
Mary Meeker, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, will take a board observer seat at the company. She already serves on the board of Square. Meeker is considered a giant in the tech industry, and she’s a veteran of the dotcom boom.
SoundCloud’s B-round funding was from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures, and Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures did the A-round.
What signal does this send? Well, put simply, SoundCloud’s founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss are gunning to do what YouTube did in video, but for audio. There are several other pretenders to this throne, like Audioboo, but Berlin and London-based SoundCloud has headed in this direction most convincingly so far.