Slack, the US-based workplace communication platform backed by telecommunications group SoftBank, mass media group Comcast and internet technology conglomerate Alphabet, is raising about $400m in funding, TechCrunch reported yesterday.
Growth equity firm General Atlantic will lead the round, according to multiple sources, and could be joined by investment firm Dragoneer. It is set to value Slack at $7bn post-money, approximately $2bn more than its last round, closed in September 2017.
Slack has built a workplace communication platform that had accumulated 8 million daily active users as of May this year, 3 million of which have paid subscriptions. Those users include 70,000 paying teams from businesses such as eBay, IBM and 21st Century Fox.
The company’s last funding came in a $250m round backed by SoftBank and venture capital firm Accel in 2017 that valued it at $5.1bn post-money, and which increased its overall funding to $841m according to the Financial Times.
GV, the Alphabet subsidiary formerly known as Google Ventures, co-led Slack’s $120m series D round with VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) in 2014, investing with existing backers Accel, Social Capital and Andreessen Horowitz at a $1.12bn valuation.
All the series D investors returned for a $160m series E round in 2015 that also featured Horizons Ventures, DST Global, Index Ventures, Spark Capital Growth and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) that valued the company at $2.8bn.
Slack secured a further $200m in an April 2016 series F round that included GV, Comcast, which invested through its Comcast Ventures unit, Accel, Index Ventures and Social Capital at a $3.8bn post-money valuation.