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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchOn May 17, 2012, Rakuten announced that it was leading a $100 million investment in Pinterest. Existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and angel investors also participated. Contemporary reporting put Pinterest’s private valuation at about $1.5 billion, while Rakuten said the financing would fund product improvements, global community growth and a strategic expansion beginning in Japan.
What happened on May 17, 2012?
Rakuten’s announcement described a new investment in Pinterest and a partnership between the Japanese e-commerce company and the visual-discovery service. The official release confirmed the round size and participants, but did not publish Pinterest’s valuation or Rakuten’s exact individual contribution.
Rakuten later characterized the transaction as a $100 million allocation of new Pinterest stock. VentureBeat, citing AllThingsD, reported that Rakuten contributed more than $50 million. That contribution figure is a contemporary media report, not a figure confirmed in Rakuten’s announcement.
The stated objectives were to improve Pinterest’s service, expand its community internationally and develop the company in Japan and Rakuten’s other markets. Rakuten’s May 17, 2012 announcement is the primary source for those terms.
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What did “billion dollar club” mean?
The phrase referred to Pinterest’s estimated private-market valuation, not to sales, profits or the size of the financing. VentureBeat reported that AllThingsD valued Pinterest at approximately $1.5 billion after the round. Rakuten’s own release confirmed the investment but did not state that valuation.
| Figure | What it represents | Evidence and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| $100 million | Financing announced for Pinterest | Confirmed by Rakuten; Rakuten later described it as new-stock allocation |
| Approximately $1.5 billion | Reported private valuation | Contemporary VentureBeat report citing AllThingsD; not disclosed in Rakuten’s release |
| More than $50 million | Reported Rakuten contribution | VentureBeat report citing AllThingsD; exact amount was not officially published |
Pinterest remained a private company. Rakuten did not acquire it, and the $100 million investment was not a billion-dollar purchase. The available public announcements do not establish Rakuten’s ownership percentage, share price, liquidation preferences or whether the reported valuation was calculated on a pre-money or post-money basis.
Why investors saw commercial value in Pinterest
Visual discovery rather than text search
Pinterest organized images into themed boards, allowing people to collect and revisit ideas about fashion, home projects, recipes, travel and products. That visual format gave the service a different proposition from text-heavy social networks: users could discover possibilities before they knew exactly what they wanted to search for.
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Evidence of rapid period-specific growth
Rakuten’s July 2012 release cited comScore and Experian Hitwise figures showing 11.7 million U.S. visitors in January 2012 and described Pinterest as the third-largest U.S. social-networking site by March. Those were measurements for that period, not current audience statistics and not a count of registered or monthly users.
Potential shopping intent
Images of products and lifestyle ideas could send interested users to merchants. For investors, that created a social-commerce thesis: Pinterest might influence what people buy by shaping discovery and inspiration, while retailers could receive referral traffic without users beginning with a conventional product search.
Why Rakuten wanted the partnership
Rakuten operated a broad marketplace and merchant ecosystem. Pinterest offered a discovery layer that could make shopping more inspirational and less dependent on a catalog or keyword box. In Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani’s description, Pinterest’s combination of curation, consumers and retailers complemented Rakuten’s e-commerce model.
The geographic opportunity was also important. Rakuten aimed to help Pinterest expand in Japan and in its other international markets, while Pinterest could gain distribution through an established regional commerce platform. The arrangement therefore combined capital with a possible route to localization, merchant relationships and future shopping-related monetization.
That fit also carried an execution risk. Pinterest’s product was built around inspiration and personal curation, whereas Rakuten’s core business was marketplace commerce. Successful cooperation required adding commercial utility without turning Pinterest into a conventional product catalog. This is an inference from the companies’ stated strategies, not a disclosed assessment of internal deal risks.
What the partnership produced in 2012
The relationship moved beyond a financing announcement within weeks. On July 4, 2012, Rakuten said it had added Pinterest’s “Pin It” button to three services:
- Rakuten Ichiba
- Rakuten Travel
- Rakuten Recipe
The button let users save or share product, travel and recipe images to Pinterest boards. That implementation provided concrete evidence that the parties intended to connect Rakuten’s inventory and content with Pinterest’s discovery behavior. Details appear in Rakuten’s July 4, 2012 announcement.
How this round fit Pinterest’s earlier financing
VentureBeat reported that Pinterest had previously raised approximately $40 million. Because the contemporary report did not provide a complete, independently verified financing table, that amount is best treated as an estimate of earlier funding rather than a definitive cumulative total.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What cannot be concluded from the public record
- The exact percentage of Pinterest owned by Rakuten.
- The exact number or price of shares purchased by each investor.
- The final capitalization table or preference terms.
- Whether Pinterest’s $1.5 billion reported valuation was pre-money or post-money.
- Whether Rakuten received a board seat.
- Whether the Japanese expansion achieved a particular user, revenue or market-share result.
- Rakuten’s eventual return, sale history or present ownership without separate transaction records.
Keeping these limits separate from the confirmed financing prevents a reported private valuation from being mistaken for a fully disclosed public-company transaction.
What happened after the private round?
Pinterest eventually entered the public markets. In an April 17, 2019 announcement, Pinterest priced its initial public offering at $19 per share, offered 75 million Class A shares and disclosed an underwriters’ option for up to 11.25 million additional shares. The company expected its stock to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on April 18 under the ticker PINS. Its IPO-era description said more than 250 million people used Pinterest monthly at that time. Pinterest’s IPO-pricing release confirms those details.
The IPO does not, by itself, reveal what Rakuten earned from the 2012 investment. The original ownership percentage, later dilution, any sale transactions and the disposition of the stake are not established by the sources cited here, so a precise return calculation would be speculative.
Why the 2012 deal mattered
The Rakuten round captured an early version of the social-commerce idea: a service built for visual inspiration could become commercially valuable by influencing discovery, while an e-commerce operator could provide merchants, distribution and international reach. The $100 million financing supplied growth capital, but the reported $1.5 billion valuation reflected investors’ expectations about Pinterest’s future network, referral and commerce potential—not a guarantee of revenue or success.
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