Symphony Communication Signs Deal With Dow Jones

Symphony Communication Services LLC, the instant-messaging software company backed by several of Wall Street's biggest firms, has signed a deal with Dow Jones & Co. to provide news content on its service, people familiar with the matter said.

Stories from the Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal will appear on the new messaging platform, which is set to launch this week, the people said. Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp.

Symphony has won backing on Wall Street because it has been viewed as a potential lower cost alternative to a popular messaging service on Bloomberg LP's terminals.

The company has also made its encryption technology a key selling point for financial firms wary about sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.

The Palo Alto, Calif., company has secured $66 million in financing from 14 firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and BlackRock Inc.

Dow Jones is a member of the Symphony Foundation, a group of companies that are using the startup's open-source software to develop applications that can be used on the messaging system.

The Financial Times earlier reported that Dow Jones has signed a content deal with Symphony.

Write to Lukas I. Alpert at [e-mail]

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 13, 2015 22:55 ET (02:55 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.