Twilio to Acquire Email API Platform, SendGrid

Cloud communications platform provider Twilio has announced its intention to acquire Email API platform, SendGrid in a move that plugs a gap in their portfolio.

Twilio currently provides API’s for developers to integrate almost every channel of communications including voice, video, SMS and chat but the new acquisition will add email into the mix.

“We started Twilio 10 years ago to democratise communications, giving developers the power to make a phone ring with just a few lines of code.” Explains Jeff Lawson, CEO & Co-Founder of Twilio Inc in a blog post on the company website announcing the acquisition. “Over the years, we’ve evolved our platform to address nearly every channel that companies use to communicate with their customers, including voice, video, SMS, chat, smart speakers like Alexa, and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.”

“As we continued to add new means of communication, you’ve told us that there has been one missing from our platform — email.”

“We’ve watched SendGrid on their journey to build the industry’s best cloud-based email delivery platform. They’ve taken the same developer-first approach as we have – building a great API, reducing friction to getting started, focusing on trust and quality and showing developers what’s possible with the power of code.”

Founded in 2009, SendGrid has developed a disruptive, cloud-based email service designed to solve the challenges of delivering emails on behalf of growing companies with reliability. SendGrid is now responsible for sending billions of emails for some of the best and brightest companies in the world.

“Joining Twilio enables us to accelerate our journey toward a shared vision of offering one trusted platform to fuel the future of customer communications.” Commented Sameer Dholakia, CEO at SendGrid. “We are excited to be a part of a proven, successful and rapidly growing cloud communications platform, aligned with our API-driven developer-centric roots, as well as our mission, vision and values. SendGrid is a category leader in email delivery, reaching half of the world’s digital users every three months. Twilio’s cloud communications platform spans complementary customer communications channels including voice, video & messaging. Bringing the two companies together can empower all of our customers to better reach and engage more of their customers in-context, driving engagement and business growth.”

Both Twilio and Sendgrid are behind over 600 billion customers interactions every year and work with over 100,000 customers.

The acquisition is expected to complete during the first half of 2019, until which point it is stressed that both companies will operate as business as usual.

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