US-based instant communication technology provider Slack announced 11 new recipients of funding from its corporate venturing unit, Slack Fund, on Tuesday.
Slack Fund was formed in December 2015 with $80m in capital to invest in startups developing app and enterprise tools compatible with Slack’s workplace communication platform.
Slack provided more than half of the unit’s funding, with the rest coming from venture capital firms Accel Partners, Andreessen-Horowitz, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Spark Capital and Social Capital.
The company has since invested almost $2m in 14 startups that have raised more than $30m of funding altogether, the first three of which were Slack bot developers Awesome.ai, Begin and Howdy.
The next group includes expense reporting software producer Abacus, business conversation app development platform Automat, personal enterprise assistant Butter.ai, workplace feedback platforms Growbot and Candor, and Birdly, the developer of a tool that links the Slack and Salesforce platforms.
The other portfolio companies are goal-focused Slack tool developer Lattice, Slack bot development tool provider Myra Labs, customer relationship management startup Sudo, recruitment technology startup Wade and Wendy, and Kandor, which gives on-demand access to freelancers through Slack.