The platform, developed specifically for the financial services industry, has seen rapid growth since its debut in 2014. It now wants to expand to new products and markets.

Symphony, a chat and work collaboration platform for the banking industry, has raised $165 million in fresh funds, adding Standard Chartered's SC Ventures and MUFG Innovation Partners – Mitsubishi UFJ Financial’s venture fund – to its pool of investors, the U.S.-based firm announced on its blog.

After the Series E funding round, Symphony’s total capital raised to date has reached over $460 million from investors, which include Google, Lakestar, Natixis, Societe Generale, UBS, Merus Capital and BNP Paribas, as well as Bank of America, BlackRock, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and J.P. Morgan.

The strategic investment in Symphony «will provide the bank with greater insights into future trends in the enterprise communication and workflow collaboration space,» Alex Manson, global head of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered, said.

New Products

Symphony's financial backers are also its primary users – the platform is used both for internal collaboration as well a channel to communicate with outside partners and integrate data from across their networks in a secure and compliant way.

The firm will use the new funds to improve the platform's functionality and workflow automation, increase its sales presence in Asia and make acquisitions, the statement said.

Symphony is the result of a joint effort financial institutions led by Goldman Sachs in 2014 to reduce the cost of market data and communications between staff and with customers. Since then, it has grown its user base to over 430,000 users in 60 countries.  The company is now valued at $1.4 billion.

Slack Listing

Workplace messaging apps are the latest darlings of Wall Street. Slack, another U.S.-based cloud collaboration platform, will debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The hotly anticipated listing, will be done without an IPO, so it's shares will start trading on the exchange without a share sale by the company.

According to the «Financial Times,» the company is valued at $16.7 billion.