U.S. start-up Pinterest raises $100 mln in funding-WSJ

May 17 (Reuters) - Pinterest, the increasingly popular online bulletin board, raised $100 million in a financing round that values the U.S. start-up at $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding is led by Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten , with Pinterest's existing venture-capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners also participating, the report said.

Pinterest could not immediately be reached by Reuters for comments.

The social site where users can "pin" images and follow others' collections has surged in recent months to become the 16th most-visited site in the United States, according to the Web information company Alexa.