Thursday, March 20, 2014

TextPlus Competitor Lands $280M From Alibaba

A direct competitor to Marina Del Rey-based free texting and phone service provider TextPlus said today that it has raised a huge, $280M funding round for its services. Silicon Valley-based Tango raised the giant funding round from Chinese company Alibaba, which reportedly valued Tango at around $1 billion. Tango has previously raised funding from San Diego's Qualcomm Ventures, among a number of other companies. Tango offers up a mobile app which lets users send free text messages, and make voice and video calls. The firm says it has 200M registered users and 70M active users. TextPlus has not recently released any of its user numbers, but says on its website that it "connects over 110 million people worldwide". TextPlus is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Matrix Partners, and Upfront Ventures. More information »