SendBird, a chat API that developers can use to add messaging features to their apps has collected $50M in Series B Extension Round which raised the total Series B funding to $102M. The funding round was led by Tiger Global Management and ICONIQ Capital with help from other investors like Y Combinator, Shasta Ventures, FundersClub and August Capital.
SendBird was added to our portfolio in 2016 and just raised $16M in Series A. However, after this huge Series B round, the total funding amount of SendBird has reached almost $121M.
This is a huge investment for a Series B-level company, and what appears to be driving such a large influx of cash is a fast-growing market with tremendous demand for user-to-user messaging inside apps. By offering this as an API service, developers can drop the capability into their apps without having to build it from scratch. It’s a similar value proposition as Twilio for communications or Stripe for payments.
Kim says today’s additional money comes at a time when his company is accelerating its go-to-market strategy. “Starting from marketing and sales, we are building the go-to-market engine to scale our global presence by hiring leaders in key areas of the business and building teams around those leaders. To accelerate this process, we’re working with our new investors for Series B, who have made many investments in our target markets and built strong connections there,” Kim told TechCrunch.
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