Symphony Communication Services, the secure online messaging platform backed by a host of corporate investors, is in talks to raise “at least” $100m from new investors, The Information reported yesterday.
Symphony has built a cloud-based platform that enables users to communicate securely with each other, and developed it in order to serve financial traders who need to send or receive information quickly without it being intercepted.
Users pay upwards of $20 a month to use the service, and Symphony has accumulated 230,000 individual users and 190 corporate accounts worldwide.
The company is not yet profitable and is investing in growth, with plans to boost its customer service and sales teams by the end of 2017.
Symphony was launched in 2014 with $66m from financial services firms BofA Merrill Lynch, BNY Mellon, BlackRock, Citadel, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, JP Morgan, Maverick, Morgan Stanley, Nomura and Wells Fargo
Internet technology provider Google joined investors including financial services providers Natixis, Societe Generale and UBS, venture capital fund Lakestar and VC firm Merus Capital for a $100m series B round the following year.
The company added $63m from undisclosed existing investors in May 2017, and it has now raised approximately $229m in total.
The prospective funding would support Symphony’s expansion of the platform into areas such as healthcare, insurance, accounting and government, founder and CEO David Gurle told The Information, though he did not identify any potential participants in the new round.