Slack Technologies, the San Francisco-based software company has managed to raise $250 million as its funding. The massive investment was made by Vision Fund, which comes under Softbank Group Corporation. This much-needed funding will boost Slack’s expansion strategies, which is highly necessary for the competitive market of messaging services for corporates.
Reuters first reported the report of Slack Technologies receiving a funding of $250 million in July. The report stated that Slack was in the process of raising massive funding from its all-star investor list.
While it was just a rumor back then, the news was confirmed on Sunday, September 17, through a Financial Times report. After the latest round of funding, the messaging service company managed to raise a total of $841 million in funding, which put the total worth of the company at $5.1 billion, a jump from the previous calculation of $3.8 billion.
Softbank’s Vision Fund invests in Slack
Apart from Vision Fund, Accel and other investors also pitched in for Slack Technologies. However, Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack Technologies stated during an interview on Monday, September 18 that more than half of its funding can be credited to SoftBank. Butterfield also revealed that Deep Nishar, SoftBank’s managing director of investments contacted him four to five months ago regarding possible investment ventures.
The San-Francisco based software company stated that the money raised in its latest funding rounds would be used for “operational flexibility,” and not for any particular department. Apart from that the company also revealed that much of the $591 million funding remained with it. Butterfield is of the view that the extra capital will help give confidence to its clients, investors, existing, and future employees, that the company is not just a stint but is establishing a permanent footprint in the market.
This month, Slack announced that it would be expanding its services to various other languages to broaden its client and consumer base. The San Francisco-based company revealed that it would be introducing French, Spanish, German, and Japanese for its services as it readies itself to compete with Atlassian Corp.’s HipChat and Microsoft Corp.’s Teams.
Both its rivals have their own messaging service for corporate consumers.
Slack is one of the fastest growing businesses
Earlier in June during an interview with publication Fortune, Butterfield revealed that the role of Slack had expanded from a real-time chat service to a service that provides features that can be used to make a business productive. These features are often presented to clients in the form of a consumer-friendly interface. Apart from that the CEO also envisions to expand the company into a "virtual chief of staff" which would help in fulfilling tasks such as employee feedback.
