Slack in planning to IPO in 2019

Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield.

• Slack is planning to IPO in 2019, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed to Business Insider by a person familiar with the matter.
• According to the Journal's sources, the upcoming IPO will take place within the first two quarters of 2019, and will value the company around $7 billion.

Slack is planning to IPO in 2019.

The upcoming IPO - which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed to Business Insider by a person familiar with the matter - is scheduled to take place by fall 2019 and could value the company around $7 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal's sources.

A spokesperson for Slack said that the company does not provide comment on "rumors and speculation."

In 2017, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told Bloomberg that an IPO was still a long way off. The company most recently closed a $427 million funding round in August led by Dragoneer Investment Group and General Atlantic, which valued it at more than $7 billion.

While the San Francisco-based company has yet to hire underwriters, the Journal's sources report that the company is actively preparing to go public.

Slack was founded in 2009. Its popular work chat software is estimated to be used by 8 million people daily.