Symphony Raises $165 million To Strengthen Global Footprint

Palo Alto, CA (US)- headquartered leading secure team collaboration platform- Symphony Communication Services, LLC, which was founded in October 2014 and has offices in Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Sophia-Antipolis, Stockholm and Tokyo has raised $165 million in new capital. Standard Chartered and MUFG Innovation Partners Co., Ltd., along with a group of existing and other investors, participated in the round. This incidentally has taken Symphony’s total capital raise as on today to over $460 million from the world’s leading financial services firms, global venture capital funds, and technology companies.

David Gurlé, founder and CEO of Symphony, said that capital markets’ interest in accelerating Symphony’s growth is as strong as ever, they are very pleased to welcome Standard Chartered and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to their strategic investor community. Interestingly, this investment promises to establish an unprecedented coalition of East and West, North to South and it also unites fragmented communication infrastructure into a mission-critical secure and compliant collaboration platform - an unprecedented global effort to accelerate efficiently financial workflows. Symphony’s community is flocking together to build much stronger connections, automation, and expanded customer reach as part of their digital transformation initiatives.

Within just four and a half years, this investment comes after a year of exceptional growth and momentum for Symphony, including:

• Surpassing 430,000 licensed users from over 60 countries, making the Symphony community the largest global financial digital network to date.

• In just one year, the development of more than 1,000 bots and apps on the Symphony platform by its community of customers and partners, validating the strength of the platform and higher demand for automated workflows across the industry.

• The roll-out of Symphony Market Solutions, a new business, which has been introduced to help customers speed up their digital transformation initiatives via workflow automation along with a suite of standardized, licensable software solutions.

• Growth of its talent pool at three development centers: Palo Alto, CA; Stockholm, Sweden; and Sophia-Antipolis, France, as well as continued growth in its business centers in New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney, allowing Symphony to take advantage of global technology talent and to better meet the needs of its increasingly global and diverse community.

Darren Cohen, global head of Principal Strategic Investments (PSI), Goldman Sachs, said that while they’re thrilled with Symphony’s traction and global network build-out, they also believe the transformative period of Symphony’s journey is just beginning. The rapid proliferation of Symphony bots and application integrations across the trade lifecycle and throughout the enterprise gives them a glimpse into the future. Symphony’s secure infrastructure and diverse ecosystem will enable the industry to unlock significant operational efficiency and meaningfully enhance the client experience, he said.

Michael Elanjian, head of digital strategy and fintech, corporate & investment bank, JP Morgan, said that they are excited to repeat their support and commitment to the growth of Symphony with an additional investment. Symphony’s unique, secure and compliant workflow platform is driving meaningful transformation in their industry for them and their clients.

Nobutake Suzuki, President, and CEO, MUFG Innovation Partners Co., Ltd, on his part, said that digital transformation is central to Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s future business, and collaboration with Fintech companies is a crucial part of that process. Forming agile partnerships with exciting and innovative companies like Symphony helps them remain a partner of choice in a changing world, he said.

Alex Manson, global head of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered, said that Standard Chartered is excited to support Symphony as one of the leading collaboration platforms deployed by the largest financial services firms globally. The strategic investment will offer the bank greater insights on future trends in the enterprise communication and workflow collaboration space. Furthermore, as a leading Global Bank, Standard Chartered would look to assist Symphony to grow in our footprint markets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, he said.

In the new scheme of things, Symphony will use the fresh capital to evolve its new market solutions business, to accelerate growth in both its current and new markets. The fresh inflow will also be used to further build out its feature stack to deliver a new wave of innovation to enterprises as they replace traditional collaboration tools.