Twilio, an API maker that bridges the telecom and the developer worlds, has closed a $ 70 million Series D round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and new investor Redpoint Ventures. Draper Fisher Jurvetson also participated.
The company has already racked up some pretty hefty investment rounds, and its most likely next step is an IPO — if it doesn’t get scooped up in acquisition. A Twilio spokesman said that Twilio is weighing all its options, but an IPO seems like the most likely path.
Though it’s a hot company, few people actually get what Twilio does due to the arcane telecom world it travels in. It has basically teased out carrier voice and messaging interfaces all over the world and offered them up to developers as simple APIs.
A few lines of code in an app, and developers can send out text messages and voice calls just like the pros. What’s more, they don’t have to strike individual deals with the hundreds of carriers around the world or integrate separately with each of their communications APIs. It’s a model that global carriers have tried to pursue on their own, but so far they’ve failed miserably.
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