Slack, the fast-growing office messaging tool, has finally completed a new round of funding, including new investor Thrive Capital, it said Friday.
The funding has been expected for a while and has been much reported. There are other new investors, such as Comcast Ventures and GGV, but current ones also participated.
And that list of venture funders has become long and powerful, including: Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners, Digital Sky Technologies, Horizons Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital Growth, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Social Capital.
The round values Slack at about $3.8 billion, post-money, lower than the $5 billion valuation it had been considering aiming for earlier this month. But instead of raising $400 million to $500 million, which was considered due to a lot of incoming investment interest, several sources said that the San Francisco-based Slack opted to raise just $200 million this time.
Several sources said that Slack might go back for more funding soon enough, but the new valuation is a healthy bump from its previous funding valuation of $2.8 billion a year ago. Even with an annual recurring revenue of $64 million last year that is growing quickly, this is still a heady price for tech investors. So far, Slack has raised $540 million, including three previous rounds, and has 430 employees.
But all this dough is probably no surprise, since many in Silicon Valley have been coalescing around the perceived “winners” like Uber, Airbnb and Slack. As one source noted of the increasingly selective funding environment, there are “outsize investments for truly unique growth trajectories.”
In addition, Slack, which is headed by veteran entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield, has also attracted continuing acquisition from major companies like Microsoft, which makes it even more attractive. “There is always an out right now,” said one investor, even if it is not an exit that Butterfield wants to take. “He wants to take this thing big.”
Source: Re-code
