Amid reports that it is in talks about a $100 million funding round, bank-backed messaging platform Symphony has unveiled a new virtual meetings tool and an API that lets developers create integrations with third-party apps.
Launched last year by a 14-strong consortium of sell-side brokers - including Goldman Sachs, Citi and Deutsche Bank - Symphony plans to challenge Bloomberg's dominance as the default messaging medium for traders.
The firm has raised $170 million from its founders and the likes of Google Alphabet but is already seeking to bring in another $100 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources. Singapore wealth funds Temasek Holdings and GIC, as well as PE firm General Atlantic have been in talks about joining the round, which could close early next year.
According to Business Insider, Symphony has 116,000 subscribers from 104 companies for its $15 a month service. However, according to the WSJ it has still to gain widespread use even at its founder firms.
In an effort to boost its chances of making its way onto more Wall Street desktops, the new entrant is introducing a meetings tool that lets users launch voice, video, and screen sharing inside chat rooms with a click, offering multi-modal interactive sessions while maintaining the context of a single workflow.
Meanwhile, a new Symphony Webhooks API will allow developers to contribute their own integrations to an ecosystem of partner applications. So far, Dow Jones, FlexTrade, IHS Markit and Money.Net are among the partner programme members.
David Gurle, CEO, Symphony, says: "Symphony Meetings, Webhooks, and our partner program collectively balance our vision of building the secure collaboration platform that powers work. By addressing the needs of employees who count on cutting-edge, rich interactive tools, the needs of developers to integrate applications into Symphony to improve workflow, and the needs of enterprise IT managers for security and compliance, Symphony responds to the way we work."