Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) agreed to buy Segment, a San Francisco-based cloud customer data infrastructure company, for around $3.2 billion in stock.
Why it matters: The tie-up reflects how cloud company values have soared in the pandemic, with Twilio's market cap rising from $15 billion in mid-March to over $45 billion at Friday's market close.
- ROI: Segment raised over $280 million in VC funding, most recently in 2019 at a $1.5 billion valuation, from firms like Accel, Founders Circle Capital, Greycroft, GV, Meritech Capital Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Y Combinator.
- Bottom line: "Segment's belief was that a traditional CRM wasn't robust enough for the enterprise to properly manage its pipe. Segment entered to provide customer data infrastructure to offer a more unified experience. Now under the Twilio umbrella, Segment can continue to build key integrations (like they have for Twilio data), which is being used globally inside Fortune 500 companies already." — Venture capitalist Semil Shah
