US-based cross-platform chat interoperability provider Mio secured $8.7m in series A funding co-led by video conferencing platform operator Zoom and computing and IT group Cisco, signalling a future of open collaboration among companies competing in the enterprise communication software sector.
Other investors into the round include Y Combinator, Goldcrest Capital, Enicas Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Capital Factory. Cisco, which is making the investment through its strategic investment arm Cisco Investments, owns Zoom rival Webex.
Founded in 2015 as Message.io, Mio describes itself as a “Switzerland” – a neutral third party bringing other platforms like Slack, Microsoft, Zoom and Cisco together, enabling a smooth user experience for organisations.
The round brings Mio’s total funding to $17m, and proceeds will be used to improve its offering as it plans to add support for additional workplace messaging apps over the next year.
The investment by two of the largest players in the space shows a willingness among rival communication platforms – which saw explosive growth over the source of the covid-19 pandemic – to let their users communicate directly instead of having to choose between them.
Mio’s co-founder and chief executive Tom Hadfield said in a blog post: “I have talked to thousands of IT executives who are excited about the potential for seamless interoperability. It is something many of them have dreamed about for years, but I have always encountered scepticism that the biggest players in the collaboration industry would embrace interoperability. Walled gardens exist for a reason, I am often told by industry insiders: to keep the users locked in.
“This context explains why Zoom and Cisco’s investment in Mio is a big deal. Major players in the collaboration industry are listening to customers and committing to an open ecosystem.”
This is not the only recent partnership of sorts to be struck among rivals. Last month, Microsoft and internet and technology conglomerate Meta – formerly Facebook – agreed to collaborate to allow computing technology provider Microsoft’s customers to integrate Meta’s Workplace platform with Microsoft Teams.
Unlike Zoom and Cisco’s Webex platform, however, Microsoft Teams and Meta Workplace do not have as high a degree of overlap, as Workplace is set as a broader company-wide social network while Teams is more geared towards communication with direct co-workers.
Microsoft had previously struck a collaboration with Mio in late 2016 to let chatbots from other services like Slack deploy on the then-new Microsoft Teams platform.
Mio previously raised $5.75m in a 2018 round backed by Goldcrest Capital, Eniac Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures and unnamed others. It had been seeded across multiple rounds by investors including Khosla Ventures and Eniac Ventures.
While letting rivals reach across the aisle, Mio has rivals of its own. Nextplane, a team collaboration company founded nearly a decade before Mio, also allows integration between Slack, Microsoft Teams and Webex.
For Zoom, the investment is also another in a growing CVC portfolio, which it is deploying both in strategic investments and through its Zoom Apps Fund, which launched in April this year with $100m in funding.
