- LeapXpert is a communication platform that secures messaging apps for professional use.
- Business communication historically has been poorly regulated.
- LeapXpert used this 15-page pitch deck to raise a $22 million Series A+ round.
This startup is helping companies ensure the messaging channels employees use to communicate professionally are safe and in compliance with regulation.
As business communication expands beyond email to messaging apps like Signal, iMessage, and WhatsApp, companies open themselves up to security risks and struggle to meet regulatory record-keeping requirements. LeapXpert allows companies to record employees’ business communications while keeping their personal messages private.
LeapXpert has raised $36 million to date. On Wednesday, the startup announced a $22 million Series A+ round led by Rockefeller Asset Management’s Technology Ventures Group. Uncorrelated Ventures, the Partnership Fund for New York City, and existing investors also participated in the round.
“Communication channels which were created for consumers — such as WhatsApp, Signal, and so on — they don’t come with any of those enterprise controls,” Dima Gutzeit, founder and CEO of LeapXpert, told Insider. “So that’s what we do. We are taking all social channels and we are building the additional layer of enterprise controls that the market needs in order to communicate responsibly.”
Gutzeit declined to share LeapXpert’s valuation.
Monitoring business discussions on messengers outside traditional channels has long been a sore spot for Wall Street. In recent years, following regulatory crackdowns, firms have gotten more aggressive in their attempt to monitor and record these conversations.
Enterprise controls, like data-leak prevention and information barriers, help secure communication between professionals, institutions, and their clients.
LeapXpert provides a “single corporate identity” — essentially, one phone number — for employees to use across all supported platforms. Those include Signal, WeChat, SMS, iMessage, Telegram, Discord, Line, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and the startup’s platform called Leap Work. This allows the employee to use these messaging apps as they normally would, but with security and record-keeping measures operating behind the scenes.
Messaging is the new email
When companies allow communication over a variety of channels, they expose themselves to data leaks and cyberattacks. In 2022, financial-service firms paid over $1.1 billion in fees related to inadequate record-keeping, according to a release by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It’s not an issue of what was said in that communication, according to Gutzeit. Rather, the problem is that there was no copy of that communication at all, he added.
LeapXpert was founded in 2017 in Asia, where the messaging phenomenon started. The startup relocated its headquarters to the US in 2022 and has grown its team from fewer than five people to around 150 employees globally. About 80% of those employees are technologists, according to Gutzeit.
The startup’s customers consist of tier one and tier two global financial institutions across the US, Europe, and Asia, Gutzeit said. A spokesperson told Insider LeapXpert’s customer base was in the “dozens.”
Tech companies like Telemessage and Movius are LeapXpert’s most direct competitors, although Gutzeit believes his startup is better prepared to solve communication compliance challenges by virtue of the number of messaging channels it supports, its enterprise control offerings, and its positioning in the space.
Companies using LeapXpert pay a subscription fee per user for the software. For example, the business tier subscription costs $24 per user per month.
Moving forward, Gutzeit wants to expand LeapXpert to serve other verticals outside of financial services, such as law firms and healthcare institutions. He wants to grow the startup’s global reach, add more supported messaging channels, and increase its team. The founder is also exploring the role artificial intelligence could have in the startup.
“Messaging is becoming the new email,” Gutzeit said. “So those channels are adapted now officially as part of workflows and overall communication, and hence, they must come with all of the enterprise controls that the market expects.”
Read the 15-page pitch deck LeapXpert used to raise a $22 million Series A+ round.
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