Software startup Slack Technologies confirmed it raised USD 250 million from the Saudi-backed SoftBank Group and other investors. The funding round increased the company’s valuation to USD 5.1 billion. The fundraising led by SoftBank through its venture arm Vision Fund, Accel, and other investors, elevated Slack’s total amount raised to USD 841 million, the company confirmed.
The SoftBank Vision Fund is the largest private equity fund in the world. Backed up by a Saudi main sovereign fund and the Japan’s SoftBank Group, it invested over USD 93 billion in artificial intelligence and robotics last year. Among the other investors in the fund are Apple, Sharp, Foxconn Technology, Qualcomm, Mubadala Investment.
During the weekend, the enterprise messaging operator Slack has announced support for four new languages. It also introduced new shared channels feature to allow colleagues from different companies to work together on the platform. Currently, Slack has over 6 million active daily users and more than 2 million paid ones. That is an increase from 5 million users and 1.5 million paid subscribers in January.
The SoftBank Vision Fund will also increase its presence in Hong Kong. As the China’s first Internet-only insurer, ZhongAn Online Property, and Casualty Insurance decided to go public in Hong Kong, SoftBank’s Group appeared as a cornerstone investor in the IPO. It invested USD 550 million to buy a stake of less than 5 percent.
Asked to comment, the ZhongAn’s chief financial officer Francis Tang said:
This is a good marriage for the company in the sense that this is a very strategic, visionary investor and they’ve done a lot of study into the company. SoftBank is definitely a very strong stamp of approval.