Morning Report: SoftBank Drops A Quarter Billion On Slack — So Much For The IPO

Morning Report: So much for the Slack IPO coming anytime soon.

SoftBank, the anti-IPO, led a new round of capital into Slack at a freshly-minted valuation. The new capital will likely allow Slack to avoid going public for another tranche of time.

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According to the Financial Times, Slack’s latest round of fundraising totals a quarter billion dollars, “much of which came from SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund.” The Vision Fund, as we have covered here on Crunchbase News, is a nigh-epic sum of money sourced from around the globe. It is now being rapidly stuffed into a host of private technology firms that have growth potential.

The round’s $250 million brings Slack’s valuation to $5.1 billion. According to Crunchbase, the firm has raised $789.95 million to-date.

Returning to the theme of growth, Slack certainly fits the bill. As our own Holden Page wrote just last week:

[T]he company has held onto that growth. Announced at the Slack Conference yesterday, the company has picked up 500,000 paying users since October of last year, putting it at a total of 2 million paying users. The messaging company also reported 6 million daily active users across both its free and paid plans.

Slack, it has been reported, expects revenue of around $1 billion next year. That news, via Recode, came amidst notes that Slack could raise $500 million at a $5 billion valuation. That implies that the company could raise even more.

All that money means that Slack doesn’t have to go public. Why bother? At the moment, it can hoover up unlimited cash from around the world with no quarterly reports and favorable terms.

Here is Slack’s CEO, via FT:

Slack is destined for an IPO eventually, [CEO Stewart Butterfield] said, though he predicted “with almost perfect certainty” that it would not happen until after 2018.

Damn.

From The Crunchbase Daily: 

Slack raises $250M

• Slack has raised $250 million in a new financing that values the fast-growing workplace messaging and communications platform provider at more than $5 billion. SoftBank led the round, with participation from Accel and other investors.

Roku seeks $252M in IPO

• Roku is seeking to raise up to $252 million in its upcoming IPO, according to a new securities filing. The Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming media device and service provider plans to price shares at between $12 and $14 each.

On-demand services show profits

• The on-demand delivery space isn’t known for producing a lot of profitable companies. Yet some startups are managing to operate in the black, Crunchbase News reports. Favor, an Austin-based delivery startup, says it has turned profitable after narrowing its focus to Texas, while business on-demand provider Dropoff says it makes money in about half of the markets it serves.

Ride-hailing investor ties get messy

• As tech and automotive giants continue to pour money into ride-hailing companies, they’re creating some unlikely alliances. Stepped-up investor interest in Lyft is complicating matters further.