Which venture capital firm invested about $8 million in WhatsApp in April 2011?

Sequoia Capital invested about $8 million in WhatsApp in April 2011. The investment bought more than 15% of the company after months of negotiations led by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.

The funding arrived while WhatsApp was still a small, rapidly growing startup. Its founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, had previously worked at Yahoo. WhatsApp’s simple mobile messaging service was gaining traction as smartphone adoption expanded and users looked for alternatives to paid SMS.

The April 2011 round is often confused with later financing. Sequoia invested another $50 million in 2013, when WhatsApp was valued at approximately $1.5 billion. The earlier investment was therefore not the company’s only Sequoia funding.

Sequoia’s early stake became extraordinarily valuable after Facebook agreed to acquire WhatsApp in 2014. The deal was announced at a headline value of about $19 billion, making it one of the largest technology acquisitions at the time.