Artsy Raises Another $25m It Says It Doesn’t Need, Expanding Into China

Big news for team @artsy! (ps we’re hiring for 25 open positions) WSJ: Catterton Leads $25M Funding Round for Artsy http://t.co/x0n5wmWKs7

— Carter Cleveland (@carterac) March 26, 2015

The Wall Street Journal’s Private Equity Beat carries the news of Artsy’s latest fund-raising round. Carter Cleveland, the company’s CEO, says the money wasn’t sought:

A senior partner at Catterton, Michael Farello, is joining Artsy’s board with his firm’s investment.

This latest funding comes less than a year after the company raised $18.5 million in Series B funding, led by Thrive Capital. Other participants in the April 2014 round included entrepreneur Peter Thiel; art collector and entrepreneur Wendi Deng; Garage magazine Editor in Chief Dasha Zhukova; American art dealer Larry Gagosian; Sky Dayton, founder of Earthlink Inc. and Bongo Wireless Inc.; Expedia Inc. and Zillow Groupfounder Rich Barton; the Rockefeller family; IDG Capital Partners; and venture capitalist Neil Shen through the ZhenFund.

So far, Artsy has raised about $51 million in funding, the company said.

Mr. Cleveland didn’t expect to raise another round of financing so soon. “When you have two years of cash in the bank and just raised a round, you don’t expect to raise another round so soon,” he said. “Fundraising can be distracting.”

However, most of the fundraising work was done in November at the Goldman Sachs Private Internet Company Conference, where Artsy was invited to make a presentation. The presentation led to many inquiries from potential investors, Mr. Cleveland added. […]

Artsy now plans to expand into China, enlisting the help of Jimmy Hexter, a senior partner at Catterton, who gained experience with expanding companies into Asia when he was chairman of McKinsey & Co.’s Beijing office, said Mr. Cleveland. “We believe it makes sense for there to be just one global marketplace serving the customer, as opposed to many local ones. [China] is an important opportunity for us,” he added.

Catterton Leads $25 Million Funding Round for Artsy (Private Equity Beat/WSJ)