Meerkat
Earlier this week, Business Insider confirmed that Meerkat, a favorite at SXSW, was in fundraising talks with Greylock Partners at a $40 million pre-money valuation.
The new round of funding, Techcrunch reports, was led by Greylock's Josh Elman, and between $9 million and $10 million of the new infusion of investment money came from Greylock.
Angel investors also participated in the new round, which is technically a Series B round (as opposed to a seed or Series A round) because Meerkat is a spin-off of venture-backed Life on Air, Inc., which was formerly known as Yevvo. In January, Life on Air, Inc. raised $3.5 million in seed and Series A funding.
Techcrunch reports that the new round of funding values Meerkat at $40 million.
Meerkat is a new livestreaming app that syncs up with Twitter to let you live stream and share video in real time. The app quickly became a favorite of Product Hunt users several weeks ago after it was posted to the startup and app discovery website. It was a hit at SXSW as well. Sources tell Techcrunch that Meerkat now has more than 300,000 users.
Meerkat initially depended on Twitter for its social graph, but on the same day that it acquired livestreaming startup and presumed Meerkat rival Periscope, Twitter crippled Meerkat by limiting its access. But, Mashable reports, Meerkat says it's grown 30% in spite of the limitations. Meerkat also recently started introducing new features to allow it to operate independently of Twitter.