Barclays Leads Pack on $14 Million Funding Round for Cloud9 Platform

The communications technologies provider aims to replace traditional trading turrets with its cloud-enabled platform. Cloud9 digitizes trader voice communications, connecting counterparties instantly, anywhere, and at any point, to establish smoother workflows across areas such as integration, risk management, surveillance, and compliance. It is designed to enhance interoperability between third parties and deliver sophisticated data analytics using real-time audio recordings, transcriptions, and metadata based on the conversations.

Germán Soto Sanchez, president and global head of corporate developments at Cloud9, says this is a new data resource that has created interest among leading banks.

“There is a bunch of data they have access to that’s extremely valuable, and up until this point, this data was ignored,” he says. “We weaponize the voice data… not just the recording, but the metadata around the conversation, for purposes of surveillance, compliance, data insight, and efficiency.”

According to Barclays, their investment “aims to address longstanding unmet market needs, such as generating and providing holistic data on trader activity, adapting to better address new regulatory requirements, providing a more efficient cost structure and delivering true interoperability across the evolving trader desktop.” 

The extracted voice data includes pricing information, trade indicators, and keywords to spot adverse activity from traders. Promising end-to-end security across its 5,000 users, the technology uses encryption and processes millions of calls daily.

Barclays led the investment round, followed by other investors such as JP Morgan and NEX Group. The UK-based bank has also stepped forward as partner in helping with the global adoption of the voice communications platform, while JP Morgan has committed to onboarding more than 2,000 traders and salespeople, naming Cloud9 its primary provider of voice trade communications.

According to Barclays, it is already providing feedback to the Cloud9 team “to ensure that the company’s development plan fully addresses the modern needs of financial services firms,” which, the bank says, is “a critical step in fostering adoption of the Cloud9 solution across the financial services landscape.”

Launched in 2014, the Cloud9 platform has gone through two rounds of funding, receiving $30 million during its first bid in 2016. The firm is currently testing multiple proof-of-concept projects, focusing on the delivery of the data generated by the communications platform. The latest round of funding will be put toward building out the platform’s functionality, enhancing its data capabilities and driving global growth.  

“The funding is… going to give us the necessary runway to continue to develop additional features associated with the core platform,” says Cloud9’s Soto Sanchez.