The talk of Wall Street is worth more than ever. Symphony, the bank-backed chat and IM service, said Monday it has recently closed a $100 million round of financing. That’s on top of a recent $66 million financing round. Investors in the latest round include Google, UBS, Société Générale and Silicon Valley venture capital firms, the company said. The company has attracted a good deal of attention from Wall Street’s biggest players because the service could allow them to wean themselves from Bloomberg’s $24,000-a-year terminal, on whose chat and instant-messaging services traders rely to trade stocks and bonds. The total number of backers in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Symphony now stands at 21, including original backers Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase — as well as new tech investors like Merus Capital and Lakestar. “This financing is a vote of confidence in Symphony’s value proposition and benefits to business users,” David Gurle, founder and CEO of Symphony, said in a statement. Symphony’s funding round comes a month after the company, as well as four banks, agreed to beef up its paper trail so regulators can keep tabs on bankers without tipping them off.
Symphony has raised over $100m in a fundraising effort from backers, such as Google, UBS, Natixis, Societe Generale and Lakestar LP. The company is also working on an app that will allow users to pay for tickets using bitcoin, the digital currency used by many online retailers.