Social gaming giant Zynga is understood to be close to completing a US$500m funding round that values the company at US$10bn.
According to various reports, most notably from Kara Swisher, the round includes Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments and Kleiner Perkins.
To date, Zynga has raised US$500m from various Silicon Valley executives, including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and Russia’s DST Global, a major investor in Facebook.
The online colossus that is Zynga
In just more than three years, Zynga has grown to being an online colossus through massively popular social games FarmVille, CityVille and Mafia Wars.
The company spread virally online and largely via Facebook. The company shares some of its revenue with Facebook but overall sales of virtual goods and advertising has led to annual revenues of US$1bn.
It is the latest in a series of worryingly large valuations attached to fast-growing online giants. Facebook for example, has been valued lately at US$52bn; Groupon has been valued at US$7.8bn; and Twitter has been valued at US$10bn.
