Symphony Raises $165M USD to Bolster Global Footprint

Symphony expands beyond messaging to become the standard collaboration workflow platform for its growing community, facilitating digital transformation of financial markets.

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 12, 2019 – Symphony Communication Services, LLC, the leading secure team collaboration platform, today announced it has raised $165 million USD 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 brings Symphony’s total capital raised to date to over $460 million USD from the world’s leading financial services firms, global venture capital funds, and technology companies.

“Capital Markets’ interest in accelerating Symphony’s growth is as strong as ever, we are very pleased to welcome Standard Chartered and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to our strategic investor community,” said David Gurlé, founder and CEO of Symphony. “This investment establishes an unprecedented coalition of East and West, North to South and unites fragmented communication infrastructure into a mission-critical secure and compliant collaboration platform – an unprecedented global effort to accelerate efficient financial workflows. Symphony’s community is coming together to build stronger connections, automations 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 power of its platform and increased demand for automated workflows across the industry.
• The launch of Symphony Market Solutions, a new business 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.

“Symphony has generated tremendous interest for revolutionising buy-side and sell-side secure messaging and collaboration in global markets, both in content curation and consumption as well as the workflow across the whole deal life-cycle,” said Yann Gerardin, Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Head of Corporate and Institutional Banking at BNP Paribas. “We are proud to support the company’s next stage of growth and to ensure its ongoing adoption by our clients and in our company.”

“While we’re thrilled with Symphony’s traction and global network buildout, we also believe the transformative period of Symphony’s journey is just beginning,” said Darren Cohen, global head of Principal Strategic Investments (PSI), Goldman Sachs. “The rapid proliferation of Symphony bots and application integrations across the trade lifecycle and throughout the enterprise gives us 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.”

“We are excited to repeat our support and commitment to the growth of Symphony with an additional investment,” said Michael Elanjian, Head of Digital Strategy & FinTech, Corporate & Investment Bank, J.P Morgan. “Symphony’s unique, secure and compliant workflow platform is driving meaningful transformation in our industry for us and our clients.”

“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 us remain a partner of choice in a changing world,” said Nobutake Suzuki, President and CEO, MUFG Innovation Partners Co., Ltd.

“Standard Chartered is excited to support Symphony as one of the leading collaboration platforms deployed by the largest financial services firms globally. This strategic investment will provide the Bank with greater insights into future trends in the enterprise communication and workflow collaboration space. Furthermore, as a leading global bank, Standard Chartered offers Symphony growth opportunities in our footprint markets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” said Alex Manson, Global Head of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered.

Symphony will use the new capital to evolve its new Market Solutions business, to accelerate growth in both its current and new markets, and further build out its feature stack to deliver a new wave of innovation to enterprises as they replace traditional collaboration tools.

About Symphony 

Symphony offers a secure team collaboration platform that transforms the way users communicate effectively and securely with a single workflow application. Forging a new path in the industry, Symphony is designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations of all sizes improve productivity while meeting complex data security and regulatory compliance needs. Symphony was founded in October 2014 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, with offices in Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Sophia-Antipolis, Stockholm and Tokyo.

For more information, visit www.symphony.com and connect with Symphony on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.