CBC sets up Chinese venture with Evernote

T. Rowe Price Associates, Harbor Pacific Capital, Allen & Company, and several other investors also participated in the latest round of funding, which valued the company at $1 billion.

"Our goal is to build Evernote to be a hundred-year company that delivers a lifetime of value to our users," Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote said in a statement. "This financing provides a solid step in this direction by allowing us to build better products, grow our international presence and expand the platform with strategic acquisitions."

Evernote provides a cloud-based private platform for individuals to store notes that can then be accessed across multiple devices. The company's user base has tripled in the past year to 30 million. It plans to install Chinese servers for its app and will start operations in the company - and employ 30 people - as soon as it receives regulatory approval, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Chinese authorities have blocked or limited access to internet services that are hosted on overseas servers. However, unlike social media services run by Facebook and Twitter, Evernote isn't blocked in China because it isn't a public platform.

"We worry about all of that stuff," Libin added, but "you can't allow yourself to be paralyzed by the worries... If Chinese authorities need access to Chinese data in a lawful way I don't think it's realistic to say we'll be able to stop it."

The Chinese data centers will also enable Evernote to work with Chinese developers on creating complementary add-on software, such as services that scan receipts or transcribe audio notes.

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