Snapchat, by all indications, is involved in another round of venture capital fundraising that could increase financing of the ephemeral social media messaging company by up to $500 million. The funding round could also value the still privately held "startup" at $19 billion -- a number full of irony for Snapchat's CEO Evan Spiegel.

According to The New York Times' Bits Blog, which spoke to anonymous sources at the company, the young social media company could reach a value that's nearly double over the previous year after the funding round closes. On top of that, PrivCo, a financial research firm, told CNN Money that Snapchat is confidently asking for the $500 funding in cold, hard cash.

The $19 billion valuation (the maximum figure cited, with $16 billion as the likely minimum) would put Snapchat at the top echelons of private technology firms backed by venture capital, according to Bloomberg. Only two other companies -- Uber, the ride-sharing giant worth about $40 billion, and Chinese smartphone growth-monster Xiaomi, valued at about $45 billion -- would be left ahead of Snapchat.

That $19 billion figure is an ironic number for Snapchat, which famously rejected a $3 billion buy-out offer from Facebook in late 2013 and continued to climb in popularity and value -- while others including Facebook tried, to varying degrees of failure, to clone Snapchat's magic with valuable young audiences.

That's because, just months after Snapchat declared its independence from the Facebook acquisition machine, the social media giant led by Mark Zuckerberg made a deal to buy (non-ephemeral) social media messaging service WhatsApp for... $19 billion.

Of course that WhatsApp deal reached about $22 billion in its final form, but when you're talking the skyrocketing market value of social media startups, what's a few billion here and there?