Snapchat Management Holds Talks With Saudi’s Prince Alwaleed

Senior management of Snapchat held talks with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal on potential cooperation, the prince’s investment company said in a statement on Sunday.

The meeting, which included the mobile messaging company’s Chief Executive Evan Spiegel and Chief Strategy Officer Imran Khan, comes as Snapchat embarks on a new funding round that values the business at up to $19 billion.

“On the agenda of discussions was future potential business cooperation between Kingdom Holding and Snapchat in the technology field,” Kingdom Holding, which is 95 per cent owned by Prince Alwaleed, said in a statement without elaborating.

The billionaire prince has made a number of investments in technology brands in the past, including social messaging service Twitter and Chinese e-commerce company JD.com Inc.

Los Angeles-based Snapchat, which allows its more than 100 million users to send messages that disappear after a few seconds, is looking to raise as much as $500 million in its latest funding round.