Softbank's new humongous $100 billion Vision Fund, which is solely engaged in Funding tech startups has lavished $250 million on workplace messaging startup Slack in the latest funding round. The latest round of funding has now taken Slack's valuation to $5.1 billion, however, it is still unclear how this windfall is going to be used since the company is still in possession of the funds they acquired in the last round.
Slack's windfall
SoftBank's decision to invest heavily in tech startups seems to be the primary reason why Slack has had this $250 million windfall and what is interesting to note is that the startup has not announced how that money is going to be deployed.
The company announced that the money will be used for 'operational flexibility', however, they did not go into any specifics. In this regard, it is also interesting to note that Slack also stated that the funds amounting to $591 million that they had raised in the last round is still very much in place and hence, the latest injection of funds from SoftBank is certainly a windfall for the San Francisco based company.
Slack, which has quickly grown its user base to a daily users count of 6 million, also enjoys the patronage of 2 million subscribers and boasts of revenues amounting to $200 million from their subscriber base. The company is now looking to expand its operations substantially in order to fight off competition from other tech companies and the SoftBank investment will definitely be put to use at some point.
Intensifying competition
Although Slack might be flush with cash at this point in time, they are set for a bruising battle with competitors who have made significant inroads in the workplace messaging industry and one of them is none other than tech behemoth Microsoft. Microsoft's workplace messaging service Teams and Hipchat by Atlassian are Slack's competitors.
Slack needs to expand in order to maintain their place in the industry and the company is currently in the process of offering the service in four new languages (namely, Spanish, German, Japanese and French).
On the other hand, SoftBank is now on an aggressive path towards owning a stake in some of the most promising tech startups in the world at the moment.
The $100 billion Vision Fund has invested heavily in many other companies and one of the notable investments has been $4.4 billion investment in WeWork Cos, a shared workspace startup. The fund is also weighing up a $12 billion investment in Uber, according to a Bloomberg report.
