At the top end of the startup scale, things are moving along quickly for Germany. Following Delivery Hero’s $88 million Series E, Berlin’s poster child company SoundCloud has secured new funding reportedly worth more than $60m (€44m) in a deal which values the platform at around $700m.
The deal, which was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and the Chernin Group, was apparently closed last year but has only been reported in the past few days, although the amount remains officially undisclosed. It represents a big step forward for just about the only startup originating out of the German capital which has made a significant impact on Silicon Valley.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a spokeswoman said in an email: “This investment will allow SoundCloud to grow more rapidly in product, personnel and expansion in mobile efforts.”
Since its launch in 2008, the ‘YouTube for sounds’ has grown rapidly to more than 40 million registered users. They included everything from people wanting to share sounds with friends to international music stars like Beyonce.
Existing investors including Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures also participated in the latest round.
In a blog post, IVP – a later-stage tech VC – said it believes SoundCloud “has the potential to be an iconic tech success story.”
The post added: “Despite its young age, SoundCloud is truly a global company, and has been global virtually since its inception. … We visited the company’s offices in Berlin and San Francisco and witnessed first hand the collaborative and vibrant start up culture that many leading Silicon Valley companies would aspire to build.”
The question now may be whether SoundCloud can go on to become Germany’s first billion-dollar startup, albeit one with a distinct Swedish (and global) flavour.
Either way, there can be no doubt that this latest funding is good news for Berlin, not only because it shows the future is bright for the city’s leading startup light (and up till recently, seemingly a rather lonely light), but also because this is the kind of announcement that causes others in the US to sit up and start taking notice.