– Element, the company behind an end-to-end encrypted team messaging platform powered by the Matrix protocol, has raised $30 million in a series B round of funding from a slew of notable backers, including Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn‘s Metaplanet, WordPress.com parent company Automattic, Protocol Labs, and Notion.
– In a week that saw Salesforce officially taking Slack under its wing, the gargantuan $27.7 billion acquisition serves as a timely reminder of the importance that team chat and collaboration tools play in a world that has rapidly embraced remote work. In tandem, open source software is infiltrating just about every nook and cranny of the business world, a combination that puts four-year Element in a strong position.