The answer is yes, as defined on Wall Street. According to the Wall Street Journal and Techcrunch, Zynga is in talks to raise a new round of $250 million, valuing the company at $7 – 10 billion.
That would make Zynga valued more than Electronic Arts (better ship some more Madden, boys). The valuation is less than Facebook ($52 billion) and Groupon ($15 billion, you can mock a lot of good causes on national TV with that money), but on the same level as Twitter ($8 – 10 billion).
The answer is yes, as defined on Wall Street. According to the Wall Street Journal and Techcrunch, Zynga is in talks to raise a new round of $250 million, valuing the company at $7 – 10 billion.
That would make Zynga valued more than Electronic Arts (better ship some more Madden, boys). The valuation is less than Facebook ($52 billion) and Groupon ($15 billion, you can mock a lot of good causes on national TV with that money), but on the same level as Twitter ($8 – 10 billion).
What this means is that after years in the lurch, the markets are frothy with speculation around anything games-related or social. A skeptic would suggest there is a bubble that Electronic Arts 2010 real money revenue was $3 billion compared to $850 million by Zynga.
But this isn’t about real money. It’s about the perceived value. In which case, sure, Zynga could be worth $7 – 10 billion, if investors are willing to bet their money today that Zynga is worth $10 billion in the future.
Besides, Zynga doesn’t see itself as just a games company. It has much higher aspirations. According to Techcrunch, Zynga plans to be the Google (or entry point) of games and I have always said Zynga wants to become the Facebook for social games (a social network just for gamers).
They’ve bought 10 companies in the past year, been working on their own portal/search engine/social network for the longest time (Zynga bar, RewardVille, the Zynga Dog project), have 1800 employees, and 275 million people playing their games. Given those numbers and the high level of demand for Zynga shares among investors in the secondary market, by all means, Zynga is worth $7 – 10 billion.
Though, they better go public, sooner than later, before the valuation gods change their tune. All it takes is a crazy world event to change Wall Street’s tune. Not like we haven’t seen much of that in the past couple of weeks…
