Communication startup Symphony raises $100 million from Google, other banks

The new round means that Symphony’s total funding now stands north of $165 million, while the company itself is now valued at a few $650 million, Re/Code reports.

“This financing is a vote of confidence in Symphony’s value proposition and benefits to business users”, David Gurle, Symphony’s founder and chief executive officer, said in the statement.

Symphony Communication Services LLC, the Wall Street-backed messaging startup, said Monday it raised more than $100 million from investors that include Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit and UBS Group AG. Symphony’s chat service allows financial firms, corporate customers and individuals to put all of their digital communications on one centralized platform. Its launch press release had a strong emphasis on the business need for a useful communications tool that meets security and regulatory requirements.

Symphony has just over 130 employees. It was Google Inc. – and not Google Ventures, which invests in an array of sometimes competitive companies – that made the investment in Symphony.

The support of so many Wall Street banks is important.

“People say that the message has become the nervous system of that market”, Gurle said. With the large set of firms backing the product, Symphony’s messaging platform is often referred to as a Bloomberg Terminal due to its substantially lower costs. Banks including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Bank of New York Mellon reached a deal with the Department of Financial Services of the New York state government which was concerned about a data deletion feature in Symphony.

Despite its initial focus on financial service companies, Symphony is clearly looking to expand into other industries, hence the involvement of Google in this latest round.