Larry Fink and co are taking on Bloomberg, at least when it comes to chatting.

Larry Fink BlackRock CEO

Justin Baer and Sarah Krouse of the Wall Street Journal report that, per unnamed "people familiar with the matter", BlackRock [profile] "now has moved all internal chat messaging" to the Symphony Communication Services messaging platform. BlackRock which has about 13,000 employees, is also an investor in Symphony.

The WSJ piece offers an overview of Symphony's history: launched in late 2014, a $100-million funding round in 2015 (Google participated), backing from Goldman Sachs [profile] and T. Rowe Price [profile]. The WSJ also says that, per "traders across Wall Street," "Symphony has yet to gain widespread use."

Bloomberg's "multipronged service" costs $22,000 to $25,000 per employee, per year. Symphony's chat service costs $15 per user, per month; that translates into $180 per user, per year.

Symphony may soon be connecting fundsters to their colleagues at other firms, too. Symphony CEO David Gurle tells the WSJ that they're working on messaging between companies, though they had to build "real-time compliance tools." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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