Enterprise messaging platform provider Slack Technologies Inc. is said to have raised up to $160 million Series E on a $2.76 billion valuation.

The round hasn’t been officially confirmed by the company, however The Wall Street Journal reported that new investors have committed $135 million to the round, with Slack having the option to raise another $25 million from existing or new investors.

The round is said to have been led by Horizons Ventures, and included Index Ventures
DST Global and Institutional Venture Partners.

Rumors of the round first surfaced May 24 when it was reported that the round would be in the range of $100 million to $160 million on a $2 billion valuation.

Slack has only existed in its current for since January 2013, after previously being known as Tiny Speck Inc., the maker behind an online game called Glitch; having failed with online gaming the company pivoted into enterprise messaging….as you do.

Despite its newness, the company can brag of some impressive user numbers, boasting in February that it had more than 500,000 daily users across more than 600,000 teams sending 300 million messages per month.

The rise of the unicorns

Slack is the poster company for what Forbes dubbed back in January a Unicorn, a mythical company with a valuation of $1 billion or more, a figure Slack achieved 8 months after launching its main product.

Some 13 months after launching its product (while the company rebranded in January 2013, its product didn’t launch until February 2014) that valuation is now nearly 3 times that figure, a number some might find both staggering, and representative of what more and more are calling the great second tech bubble.

There’s no question that Slack’s numbers are impressive, but a valuation at nearly $3 billion 13 months post launch either shows exuberant support, or a market that’s ready to throw money at anything that looks half decent because there’s so much money floating around they have to spend it on something.

Including this new round (and taking it at $160 million, not the possibly smaller figure) Slack (including while it was still Tiny Speck) has raised at least $340 million to-date (the figure for a seed round in 2010 was not disclosed.) Previous investors include Slow Ventures, The Social+Capital Partnership, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

photo credit: Unicorn Man via photopin (license)