Slack Regroups for Microsoft Teams Fight with Successful Funding Round

Microsoft has admitted Slack is a direct competitor to Office and more specifically Microsoft Teams. Still, with Skype for Business and Teams, Microsoft leads the workplace chat market and has given its rival plenty to think about in recent years. Still, Slack has shown it can thrive alongside Microsoft and has even continued to grow. Following its acquisition of rival HipChat last month, Slack has this week announced a new funding round. The company drew a massive $427 million from a funding round led by Dragoneer investment Group and General Atlantic. The take away from round is that Slack has now surpassed a market value of $7 billion ($7.1 billion) and is now better placed to compete with Microsoft. When discussing the successful round, Slack took the time to discuss its overall platform growth. Now with 8 million daily active users (DAUs), Slack has increased its DAUs from 6 million last September. There are now 70,000 paid teams using the service, up from 50,000 a year ago. Many analysts have been looking at the prospect of Slack being acquired by a bigger company. However, with valuation increasing, the chance of that happening is lowering. Amazon has previously been linked with a purchase of Slack but would have to pay over market valuation to do so. Is Slack worth a $10 billion investment for a larger company?

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft has admitted the platform is a direct competitor. It also seems that there may be room in the market for both companies. Slack will likely continue to play the role of successful start-up while Microsoft's Office 365/Teams bundle continue to wield the company's considerable might in the market. There's no doubt Microsoft has been placing a crosshair on Slack. The very inception of Teams two years ago was a direct response to Slack's growing popularity. In response, the start-up took out a full page in the New York Times that showed the company was worried about Teams. This year, Microsoft's push against Slack continued with a free version of Microsoft Teams.