Back in 2015, Slack announced the launch of an $80 million fund specifically for early stage companies building integrations with Slack.
First reported by TechCrunch, the Vancouver-based company revealed that it’s invested $2 million into a total of 14 startups, and unveiled the latest 11. Slack said in a blog post that, in total, the greater venture capital community has invested over $30 million in these teams.
The latest startups to receive investment from Slack include Abacus, Automat, Birdly, Butter.ai, Candor, Growbot, Konsus, Lattice, Myra Labs, Sudo and Wade & Wendy. All of the startups offer bot services. In April, Slack VP of Product April Underwood alluded to the company working on projects that would help companies make sense of the information companies have from their team, and that Slack was working with machine learning experts.
Back when Slack first announced the fund in December 2015, the company revealed its first three investments. Currently, there are over 600 apps in Slack’s app directory, with over 200 added in the last few months. Ninety percent of paid teams on Slack actively use apps.
“These are all very promising signs, and they bolster our belief that this is our collective moment to shape the way that millions of people do their jobs,” the company said. “This is why we have the Slack Fund: to help teams join us in building the future of work.”
Slack currently has 3 million users and 930,000 paid users.