2 startups are joining forces — and together they could pose a threat to Bloomberg

traders in front of bloomberg terminal

Symphony, a messaging service used by some Wall Streeters, is being integrated onto OpenFin's platform of financial-services apps.
The integration could allow Wall Streeters to create their own pick-a-mix platforms, combining Symphony's chat function with trading and data apps already on OpenFin.
That could pose a threat to Bloomberg's terminal business and Thomson Reuter's Eikon.

Symphony, a messaging service that has gained some traction among Wall Street firms, has been integrated into OpenFin, an operating system built for financial-services, the two companies announced Thursday.

OpenFin hosts more than a hundred applications on its platform, and the integration means Symphony will be "interoperable" with those apps, the same way social media apps on your phone are able to talk with one another.

“By enabling Symphony to run on the OpenFin operating system, we are making it easy for our mutual customers to unify the Symphony desktop experience with their other OpenFin-based apps," Mazy Dar, chief executive of OpenFin, said of the news.

In total, Symphony has 230,000 users across 200 firms, whereas OpenFin can be found on more than 100,000 desktops across the Street. Symphony, a unicorn, announced a $63 million fundraise in May, bringing the total amount the company has raised to $234 million. OpenFin finished a $15 million round of venture funding backed by JPMorgan in February 2017. It has raised $22 million in total funding.

In a way, Symphony replicates the messaging feature of a Bloomberg terminal. Many of its backers, including Goldman Sachs, got behind the company to put pressure on the industry data giant, which charges its users more than $20,000 per year for a subscription to its signature terminal.

OpenFin has ambitions to be to Wall Street what iOS and Android are to the mobile application world. In so doing, it's creating the possibility for a Wall Streeter to create his or her own pick-a-max terminal-like platform by matching Symphony with other OpenFin apps relevant to their business at a much lower cost. Symphony charges $20 a month for its messaging service, while OpenFin's platform is free for firms.

For Dar, however, the integration is more about making Wall Street resemble Silicon Valley.

"At our core, OpenFin is a technology company cut from the same cloth as the giants of Silicon Valley, but with a focus on the world’s financial hubs," he said. "A commitment to open source software has been a massive contributor to the success of those companies and we’ve always strongly supported the[Symphony] Foundation’s efforts to bring that ethos to finance."

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