Clubhouse gets Series B funding at a reported $1 billion valuation

Bengaluru: Clubhouse, one of Silicon Valley's buzziest social media products, has raised fresh funds in a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, a US venture capital firm.

While the company didn't disclose any specific details on the investment size or the valuation, The Information had reported last week that Clubhouse was receiving interest from venture capital firms to lead its potential funding round at roughly $1 billion valuation. If true, this is a ten-fold jump since its last funding round in May last year.

"We now have over 180 investors in Clubhouse—large and small, spanning many different races, genders, and areas of expertise, and including many members of our early community" Clubhouse said in an official blog post.



The live voice chat platform, which is still in invite-only mode, plans to use the funds raised for a global rollout this year. The company, which currently has only an iOS app, will soon begin work on an Android app as well as adding more accessibility and localisation features.

"Over the next few months, we plan to launch our first tests to allow creators to get paid directly — through features like tipping, tickets or subscriptions. We will also be using a portion of the new funding round to roll out a Creator Grant Program to support emerging Clubhouse creators,” the company said in the blog post. A large portion of the proceeds will also go towards investments in technology and infrastructure to keep with the growing demand.

"Clubhouse could not have come at a better time for social media. It reinvents the category in all the right ways, from the content consumption experience to the way people engage each other, while giving power to its creators,” said Andrew Chen, partner at Andreessen Horowitz. "It has been incredible to watch the community grow from a few hundred people to nearly two million weekly users.”


That said, Clubhouse has faced criticism over its failure to moderate objectionable content on its platform, including anti-Semitic speech, and racist and misogynist content in recent months, according to reports on The Verge and Vanity Fair.

The social media platform said it plans to continue investing in advanced tools to detect and prevent abuse while scaling up its trust and safety and support teams and increasing the features and training resources made available to moderators. Also on the cards is improved discovery that surfaces relevant people, clubs, and rooms to users based on their interests.

Clubhouse said that over the past ten months, the app has accelerated from a small handful of beta testers into a diverse and growing network of communities including musicians, scientists, creators, athletes, comedians, parents, entrepreneurs, stock traders, non-profit leaders, authors, artists, real estate agents, and sports fans among others.