New funding fuels product roadmap acceleration and global expansion of the developer platform for software-embedded communications
Twilio, the developer platform for communications, has announced that it has closed a $130 million Series E round. Investors Fidelity and T. Rowe Price led the round, together with new investors Altimeter Capital Management and Arrowpoint Partners, as well as strategic investors Amazon.com and Salesforce Ventures.
Twilio will use the additional capital to accelerate its product roadmap, such as the recently announced Real-time Communications Suite, which includes video and IP Messaging products.
The additional capital will also accelerate Twilio’s global expansion plans, deepen its penetration into enterprise accounts, and augment its ability to execute on strategic opportunities such as the company’s recent acquisition of Authy, a provider of mobile and web access security solutions.
Twilio launched in 2008 with its Programmable Voice product. Since then, Twilio has expanded its portfolio to include SMS, MMS, VoIP, identity authentication and most recently, video and IP messaging.
With Twilio’s platform, developers and businesses can quickly and easily embed voice, messaging and video capabilities directly into their mobile and web applications to make communications more contextual and relevant, driving new business model innovations and differentiated customer experiences.
Commented Jeff Blackburn, senior vice president of business development for Amazon.com: “We are pleased to help further the development of Twilio’s product roadmap and expansion plans. Twilio on AWS brings powerful cloud-based communications to developers around the world and we look forward to seeing the continued innovation the company is driving for customers.”
Said Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio: “We’re excited to add lead investors Fidelity and T. Rowe Price, who think long term and understand the fundamentals of our developer-first, platform business model. We’re excited to work with Amazon.com and Salesforce Venture; true pioneers in cloud, software and infrastructure as a service. We can’t wait to see what our customers build next. ”
