Clubhouse raises fund at a $4 billion valuation

Audio chat app Clubhouse said it raised Series C funding, led by Andrew Chen of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with major investors like DST Global, Tiger Global, and the angel investor Elad Gil, on Sunday.

Clubhouse did not disclose the amount it raised from the funding round nor the new valuation, but The Information reported earlier that Andreessen Horowitz valued the social media app at $4 billion.

In the blog post, Clubhouse said, “While we’ve quadrupled the size of our team this year, stabilized our infrastructure, launched Payments in beta to help creators monetize, and readied Android for launch, there is so much more to do as we work to bring Clubhouse to more people around the world. It’s no secret that our servers have struggled a bit these past few months and that our growth has outpaced the early discovery algorithms our small team originally built.”

The San Francisco-based-year-old company allows people to discuss various topics in its audio chatrooms, with 10 million weekly active users, which was popularized after the appearances of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The funding comes as Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Telegram, Discord, and LinkedIn are building similar live audio-only chatroom features to their services.

Vox reported Facebook is preparing to launch Clubhouse clone anytime soon with a slew of other audio-only products to take a piece on Clubhouse’s success.

Bloomberg, earlier this month, reported that Twitter Inc was in discussions to buy the audio app at a $4 billion valuation. After the talk failed with Twitter, Clubhouse proceeded with the Series C funding round.

Twitter launched Spaces in late 2020, a Clubhouse competitor, is still in beta form, and not all users can create or host public discussions.