Social Commerce Site Fancy Raises Around $20M In Series D Led By Carlos Slim Jr And Japan’s CCC

Some hot news for Fancy, the social shopping platform based out of New York. The company has raised a Series D round of around $20 million, a strategic investment led by Mexico’s Carlos Slim Domit and CCC, a holding company out of Japan whose main business is the Tsutaya chain of book and media retailers.

Fancy will use the funding to “continue to build out its technology platform and execute on new key strategic partnerships,” it notes in a blog post announcing the raise. Given the investors, that will likely include more activities in Latin America and Japan. Fancy does not specify the amount of the Series D but we’ve heard the value from a very reliable source.

Fancy’s own holding company, Thing Daemon, hasn’t posted an SEC form about the round, either. Along with Carlos Slim and CCC, the company uses the blog post to thank Arturo Elias, a director of strategic partnerships at America Movil and a director at Telmex, as well as existing investors Kering, General Catalyst, American Express, Jim Pallotta, Maynard Webb and Acadia Woods Partners and other new, unnamed investors.

Last summer the startup was rumored to be raising funding at a valuation of $1.2 billion.

Prior to this, Fancy had raised just over $104 million, from a list of high profile investors that also includes Will Smith, Len Blavatnik, Bob Pittman and Jack Dorsey.

Slim’s father, Carlos Slim Helu, is one of the wealthiest men in the world and while his very biggest investments have been in telecoms in Latin America, he’s also invested in the New York Times, the mobile photo sharing app Mobli and a few other businesses.

Slim Domit, his oldest son, is heavily involved in Slim Helu’s companies. He’s Chairman of the Board of Grupo Carso, and he is a board member of Teléfonos de Mexico (Telmex), America Móvil, Group, América Telecom, Carso Global Telecom, U.S. Commercial Corp., and some subsidiaries of Grupo Carso.

Originally compared to Pinterest, Fancy has been somewhat under the radar and keeps its cards close to its chest.

But quietly, it has been building out its social commerce business. That’s included at least one acquisition; and an (almost certainly) unplanned appearance as a player in the early days of Twitter’s “buy” button). More recently, it’s also been touted by Apple an an early partner in Apple Pay. It offers tools for merchants and publishers to embed Fancy streams directly on their sites and on Fancy’s own platform. On Android, it’s had between 5 million and 10 million downloads of its app.

Corrected to note that this is Carlos Slim Domit, son of Carlos Slim