Team chat market leader Slack Technologies Inc. today reaffirmed its position at the head of the pack by announcing the completion of a $427 million funding round led by Dragoneer Investment Group and General Atlantic.

The investment bumps the startup’s valuation to over $7.1 billion. That’s a major jump from the $5.1 billion valuation that Slack received late last year after raising a $250 million round led by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund.

Overall, the startup has raised some $1.27 billion in eight rounds. Slack has built up an formidable investor roster along the way that includes more than 30 backers ranging from institutional investors such as SoftBank to LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeffrey Weiner, Twitter Inc. co-founder Biz Stone and other prominent tech figures. A big part of the investor enthusiasm for the startup can attributed to the continued growth in team chat adoption.

Slack passed 8 million daily active users in May, with 3 million of those having paid accounts. For comparison, the startup had 6 million users in September 2017 when the SoftBank-led round was announced. It said at the time that those users accounted for $200 million in annual recurring revenue.

Slack maintains a significant lead over the competition. Facebook Inc., one of the company’s highest-profile rivals, said in July that more than 30,000 businesses rely on its Facebook for Work team communications service, while Slack was used by more than 500,000 organizations as of May.

Slack has been trying to widen this lead by expanding the range of tasks users can do through its platform’s native chat interface. A few months ago, the startup rolled out a capability called Actions that provides the ability to perform tasks in popular outside services without opening a new tab.

Slack has also made a couple of acquisitions recently. The startup bought workflow automation app Missions in mid-July and, less than two weeks later, absorbed rival team chat service HipChat. The new round gives Slack more capital to spend on potential future acquisitions, as well as internal development initiatives such as the one that produced Actions.

The startup didn’t go into detail about exactly how the new funding will be used. The round saw the participation of several other investors besides Dragoneer and General Atlantic. The group included T. Rowe Price Associates, Wellington Management Group, Baillie Gifford and Sands Capital, plus unnamed returning backers.

Image: Slack