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"Pinterest has reportedly raised $100 million (\u00A363m) as it prepares for global expansion, in a round of funding that values the social network at up to $1.5 billion.  AllThingsD originally reported that Japanese commerce giant Rakuten, which bought Play.com last September for \u00A325m, was leading the round with a $50m investment.  Ben Silverman, the chief executive and co-founder of Pinterest, was said to be still deciding on what other financing offers to accept, but it is thought that the round will close at around $100m.  In a statement to Mashable, Rakuten chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani said that there were &amp;quot;tremendous synergies&amp;quot; between Pinterest&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;vision&amp;quot; and his company&amp;#039;s e-commerce business.  &amp;quot;While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining,&amp;quot; he said.  &amp;quot;We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest&amp;#039;s vision and Rakuten&amp;#039;s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.&amp;quot; Should it be confirmed that Pinterest has raised $100m, it is thought that the company would be valued at between $1bn and $1.5bn, despite only being founded in March 2010. But Pinterest had 11.7m users in January 2012, meaning it is the fastest site in history to break through the 10m unique visitors mark. Much of Pinterest&amp;#039;s users are said to be female.  Partnering with Rakuten will allow Pinterest - a social network that allows users to &amp;#039;pin&amp;#039; images of interest on profile boards - to expand into Asia.  The startup, which is still currently just in an invite-only beta, has expanded strongly in the US and Europe, but remains underdeveloped in other territories.  Mashable noted that Pinterest recently issued a call for local-language translators for the site, starting with French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese, but later expanding to Dutch, Greek, Italian, Korean, Malay, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish and Turkish. Pinterest has remained tight-lipped on its revenue generation plans, particularly after a controversy over an affiliate revenue scheme, leading it to be withdrawn. However, many companies already use the network to drive sales of their products for retailers, and Rakuten clearly sees the value of Pinterest for e-commerce. Pinterest has so far raised $37.5 million in venture capital, including investment from FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Ron Conway. The company did not comment on the new funding reports. &amp;gt; Pinterest agrees to properly attribute Flickr images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a382192/pinterest-raises-100m-for-global-expansion/>