Twilio

Twilio is a cloud communications company headquartered in San Francisco, California, founded in 2008 by Jeff Lawson, Evan Cooke, and John Wolthuis. The company provides a suite of programmable communication APIs that allow developers to embed messaging, voice, video, and email capabilities into applications. Twilio went public on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2016 under the ticker TWLO.

Twilio's core products include Programmable Messaging, Programmable Voice, SendGrid (email delivery), and Flex, a cloud-based contact center platform. In 2020, Twilio acquired Segment, a customer data platform (CDP) that collects and unifies customer event data from web, mobile, and server-side sources. Segment serves as the data layer for Twilio's broader customer engagement offerings. Notable customers across Twilio's products have included Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft.

Twilio raised approximately $240 million across multiple funding rounds before its 2016 IPO. The company acquired SendGrid in 2019 for approximately $2 billion and acquired Segment in 2020 for approximately $3.2 billion in stock. Following a period of rapid headcount growth, Twilio conducted significant layoffs in 2022 and 2023, reducing its workforce by roughly 30% over that period. Khozema Shipchandler became CEO in January 2024, succeeding co-founder Jeff Lawson.