Evan Spiegel, Snapchat‘s chief executive and co founder could potentially be on the verge of securing millions of pounds as Yahoo may invest around £20 million in Snapchat‘s next funding round, after cashing in from its stake in e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Yahoo‘s Marissa Mayer, who has been vocal about plans to move the company away from its reliance on search and make it more of a content provider – has her sight firmly set on the very popular disappearing-chat app. The investment would see the ageing internet search engine tap into the mobile technology market and lead to larger exposure to a younger audience.

Snapchat, which turned down a £3 billion acquisition offer last year from Facebook for being too low, was created by a group of students from Stanford University in 2011. The App has, however, come under much scrutiny over whether snaps are actually deleted or merely hidden by Android phones, available for retrieval with the right forensic software.

Over the past few months, the mobile-messaging start-up has been working to secure capital from a mix of venture-capital firms, money managers and companies. The start-up has 100 million users, and accordingly to ComScore is the third most popular mobile site after Facebook and Instagram.

Ms White, a former Google sales director, told Ad Week magazine in a recent interview that Snapchat was “certainly thinking about marketers” but remained in the “early days” of efforts to make money.

According to reports, the Snapchat IM service is valued at around £10 billion, which is the highest valuations yet for a company with no profit. Although both Yahoo and Snapchat have yet to comment.