NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Newly born unicorn: Cloud comms startup Twilio raises $100m Series E on $1.1b valuation
Cloud communications company Twilio Inc., has raised $100 million Series E on a valuation of $1.1 billion, making the company a newly born baby unicorn.
Details of the investors were not available, but the round was discovered in a filing dated April 24 which authorized the sale of 8,841,730 new shares at an issue price of $11.31 per share.
Forbes independently confirmed the valuation.
Founded in 2007 Twilio offers an API that enables developers to deploy voice, VoIP and SMS apps via simple code.
The API allows third party companies to simply implement telecommunications features without the need to build their own. Companies using the API include Uber Inc., AirBnB Inc., OpenTable Inc., Box Inc., Home Depot Inc., eHarmony Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, and many more.
Twilio has been busy so far in 2015, launching its Elastic SIP trunking service to general availability in March, a cloud-based solution that provides connectivity for IP-based communications infrastructure to connect to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), for making and receiving telephone calls to the rest of the world via any broadband internet connection.
In February it acquired two-factor authentication startup Authy Inc., a company that provides a simple API for developers to customize the user experience when they add two-factor authentication (2FA,) as well as 2FA multiple add-ons for common applications such as websites, mobile, and SaaS applications by developers.
The Series E round comes as somewhat of a surprise given that Twilio was preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) as recently as February 20th, although at the time investor Scott Raney of Redpoint Ventures did say that given Twilio is in a strong position financially, “There’s no rush to go public…this is a company that’s easy to finance.”
With the new round, total funding for Twilio to-date is $203.7 million. Previous investors include Redpoint Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Bessemer Venture Partners, K9 Ventures, 500 Startups, Union Square Ventures, SV Angel, and others.
photo credit: Unicorn Rest via photopin (license)
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
