Slack raises USD 250m in funding round led by Softbank at USD 5.1bn valuation; IPO not expected until 2019
18 SEP 2017
Slack Technologies, the San Francisco, California-based enterprise messaging app, has raised USD 250m in a new funding round which valued the company at USD 5.1bn, including the new cash, the Financial Times reported.
The round was led by the Vision Fund of Japan-based SoftBank [TYO:9984] which, according to Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield had been keen to make a larger investment and is now expected to remain a backer of the business until after Slack eventually lists on the stock market.
The CEO said Slack is on track for an IPO in the future but this will not take place until 2019 at the earliest, he added. He explained that this is in part because Slack will fail to meet business targets during the year to come.
Slack announced last week that its annual recurring revenues had reached USD 200m, and Butterfield acknowledged that a decade ago such a company would already have gone public, the item reported.
Slack previously raised USD 360m in two funding rounds and has yet to spend that capital, Butterfield said.