- Date
- October 12, 2020
- Kind
- Acquisition
- Significance
- High
On October 12, 2020, Twilio entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Segment, which it called the world’s leading customer data platform, for about $3.2 billion in Twilio Class A common stock, on a fully diluted, cash-free and debt-free basis.
The terms and the pitch
- Twilio said more than 20,000 companies used Segment, and named Intuit, FOX, Instacart and Levi’s among its customers.
- Segment helps companies standardize how they collect customer data, unify records and route the data to other systems.
- Twilio chief executive Jeff Lawson said data silos destroy customer experiences; Segment co-founder and chief executive Peter Reinhardt said the two companies could build the customer engagement platform of the future.
- The deal was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The completed price
Twilio’s annual report for 2020 records that the acquisition completed in November 2020 for a purchase price of about $3.0 billion: 9.5 million Class A shares valued at about $2.5 billion plus about $413 million in cash.
Why it matters
It joined a developer-first communications platform to the leading way of collecting customer events, so messages could be sent from the same data used to define audiences. It also showed that the customer data platform was now valuable enough to be bought for billions.
What happened next
Segment became part of Twilio after the November 2020 completion.