Twilio completes $3B acquisition of SendGrid

Tuesday February 5, 2019 Tags: Boulder, SendGrid, Twilio, Sameer Dholakia, Jeff Lawson

BOULDER -- San Francisco-based Twilio (NYSE:TWLO), a leading cloud communications platform, announced the successful completion of its previously announced acquisition of SendGrid, Inc., a leading Colorado-based email API platform.

This follows approval by the stockholders of both companies at separate meetings on Jan. 30.

The transaction is valued at approximately $3 billion. Based on the closing price of Twilio Class A common stock on Jan. 31 and the exchange ratio of 0.485 shares of Twilio Class A common stock per share of SendGrid common stock, SendGrid stockholders received approximately $53.99 of aggregate value per share of SendGrid common stock.

As a result of the acquisition, shares of common stock of SendGrid ceased trading prior to the open of the market on Feb. 1 and will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

“Effective customer engagement is a strategic imperative for every company,” said Jeff Lawson, Twilio co-founder and CEO.

“With SendGrid now a part of Twilio, our goal is to provide a complete platform for every form of customer engagement. Through our mutual developer-first approach, we empower the builders of the world to create magical customer experiences unique to every interaction.”

SendGrid will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Twilio and will continue to be led by SendGrid CEO Sameer Dholakia, reporting to Lawson.

“Together, we serve more than 140,000 active customer accounts and power more than 600 billion annualized interactions each year,” said Dholakia. “We have a shared vision, a shared model and shared values that will set us up for success.

“As we join forces today, I’m more confident than ever that we can accelerate our vision of creating one unquestioned platform of choice for developers and companies around the world and help them transform the way they engage with their customers.”

Together, the acquisition will provide developers and companies with:

• Access to the single, best-in-class platform to manage all important communication channels: voice, messaging, video and now, email;
• Unmatched scalability and reliability to ensure their businesses are supported as they grow; and
• The ability to deliver consistent and personalized messaging based on the customers’ preferred form of communication.

“As a customer of both Twilio and SendGrid, we couldn’t be more excited for two of the leading customer communication platforms in the market to come together,” said Matthew Daimler, VP of strategic initiatives at Zillow Group.

“Purchasing a home is one of the most important decisions that a person will make in their lifetime therefore, our customers expect to communicate with our realtors in a timely and personalized manner whether it be via phone, text or email. Having one seamless customer communication platform that offers omnichannel engagement transforms the way we interact with our customers.”

“The acquisition of SendGrid signals that Twilio is redefining its position in the market, enhancing its customer engagement capabilities with a comprehensive omnichannel offering,” said Raul Castanon-Martinez, senior analyst, 451 Research.

“The deal should also help cement its position in the enterprise. This could give Twilio added momentum for expanding its customer base and support continued revenue growth.”

With SendGrid, developers and businesses can use Twilio to reach their customers over any channel – voice, SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, video, and now email. Across a wide variety of customer touchpoints, companies can now trust one platform to deliver the right communication, on the right channel, without having to setup different vendors for each approach.

“As the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise, Okta enables organizations to secure and manage their workforces while transforming their customers’ identity experience,” said Hector Aguilar, CTO of Okta.

“We have built a seamless, easy-to-use service that leverages email, messaging and voice for notifications and verification actions with our customers. Twilio’s and SendGrid’s services truly are mission-critical to our business, making the acquisition an opportunity for greater innovation and long-term benefits to joint customers like Okta.”