Thrashwork founders Jackson Gabbard, Dave Miller, and Josh Watzman.
Provided by: Slash Work
2 years later meta A group of former engineers at the company that announced the closure of its Workplace enterprise business are launching a new corporate communications platform.
The startup, called Slashwork, announced Wednesday that it has raised $3.5 million in funding from a variety of investors, including Slack co-founder Cal Henderson and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg’s venture capital firm Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners.
The London startup was co-founded by Jackson Gabbard, David Miller, and Josh Watzman. Former Facebook engineers created Slashwork, sales force slack and microsoft team, but powered by artificial intelligence.
“We started there and asked ourselves, ‘What will the AI era look like in 2026?'” CEO Gabbard told CNBC. “What would it look like if we started to fundamentally rethink all of this, with AI embedded in every meaningful place?”
Gabbard told CNBC that all of Slashwork’s content is embedded with an extensive language model, which enables powerful search by users. Users can also command an AI agent to help find hidden posts and images.
Sheryl Sandberg, former chief operating officer of Metaplatform, Inc., speaks to Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, December 9, 2025, in San Francisco, California, USA.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Facebook Workplace was launched in 2016 as a business communications tool similar to a corporate social network, but designed to help business customers connect with their employees. Meta has announced that it will shut down its platform in 2024 to focus on investing in the Metaverse and AI.
In addition to Sandberg, Slushwork received funding from other Facebook veterans, including former head of revenue David Fischer, former head of advertising Carolyn Everson, and AJ Tennant, former head of sales and one of Slack’s original sales chiefs.
Tennant is a major investor in Slashwork. He told CNBC that incorporating AI into the software is a unique advantage for Slashwork.
“The combination of communication and AI agents that help us get things done is going to fill a lot of the gaps that I think exist within the enterprise,” Tennant told CNBC.
Julien Codorniou, who led Facebook Workplace from launch to 11 million paid subscribers, is also a member of Slashwork’s board of directors and has overseen the company’s incubation with venture capital firm 20VC.
“The current generation of tools, Slack, Teams, Zoom, are all 10 years old, pre-AI, but they were optimized for people talking to people,” Codruniou said. “AI allows people to talk to systems, increasing the potential for communication.”
Slashwork will begin its launch with small, technology-focused companies before rolling out broadly later this year. Gabbard told CNBC that Slushwork plans to keep its team small and use the funds to iterate on design and products.
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