Twilio acquires Segment startup

Cloud communications platform provider Twilio has officially announced its intention to acquire the startup Segment for $ 3.2 billion. Payment will be made in shares, writes ko.com.ua.

Twilio rose more than 9% to $ 335 premarket. The company’s capitalization reached $ 45.58 billion.

The announcement of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Twilio’s fiscal year 2020, came after the company priced third-quarter sales above its previous forecast earlier this month.

Segment was founded in 2011 by graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Ilya Volodarsky, Ian Storm Taylor, Peter Reinhardt, Calvin French-Owen. The startup is developing a cloud platform for analyzing, structuring and processing user data in real-time.

Segment reportedly has over 20,000 clients in its portfolio, including companies such as Intuit, FOX, Instacart and Levi’s. The company employs over 500 employees. The total investment in Segment at the moment is $ 284 million.

Cloud companies are seeing a surge in demand this year as more businesses use their services to move to work from home in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result of the deal, Segment will become part of Twilio.

Morgan Stanley & Co LLC acted as financial advisor to Twilio on this transaction and Cooley LLP acted as a legal advisor.