Cloud9 Technologies, the US-based developer of a communication system for use in the financial markets, has closed a $17.5m series B round led by financial services firm UBS.
Existing investors including fellow financial services provider Barclays and investment bank JP Morgan also participated in the round. It appears to be the final close of a $14m round the company announced in August 2018 that also featured financial technology producer NEX Group.
Founded in 2014, Cloud9 has created a cloud-based voice communication platform that allows traders to communicate both with each other and counterparties, essentially allowing them to conduct trades remotely. The system also transcribes communications and collects metadata.
Lee Fulmer, head of UBS subsidiary UBS Investment Bank’s Innovation Lab, will join Cloud9’s board of directors in conjunction with the round. He said: “Our decision to invest in and partner with Cloud9 makes sense for many reasons.
“Not only are we committed to equipping our own traders with tools for seamless and agile communications – more relevant today during the current Covid-19 crisis – but also because we see many benefits to a cloud-based environment and the data insights that come with it.”
JP Morgan’s parent company, JPMorgan Chase, led Cloud9’s $30m series A round in 2016, investing alongside NEX (then known as Icap), Barclays, Point72 Ventures and various angel investors. Barclays, JP Morgan and Icap had supplied an undisclosed amount of seed funding earlier the same year.
