Cloud communications heavyweight Twilio Inc. today announced that it has acquired Electric Imp Inc. to grow its budding “internet of things” business.
San Francisco-based Twilio provides a set of application programming interfaces that underpin numerous online services ranging from Uber to Box. It originally focused on selling APIs that help developers build SMS and calling features into their applications, but has since branched out to other areas including the IoT market. The company grew revenues 62% last year to $1.13 billion.
The IoT market looks to be an important focus for Twilio as it continues pursuing new sources of revenue growth. Electric Imp has raised over $40 million in funding and offers a suite of products that help enterprises manage large fleets of connected devices. Its portfolio spans hardware, software and cloud services.
On the hardware front, Electric Imp provides compact chip modules that companies can embed into systems such as parking meters to turn them into connected devices. These chip modules are powered by impOS, a homegrown operating system. Customers can manage their connected hardware via a platform called the Electric Imp Cloud that provides the ability to send commands to devices, release security patches and perform other maintenance tasks.
Electric Imp’s website claims its technology powers more than 430,000 devices.
Twilio offers IoT solutions of its own, notably a global telecommunications network that companies use to give their connected devices internet access. The acquisition of Electric Imp’s broad product portfolio will enable Twilio to expand into multiple additional segments of the IoT market.
“This partnership brings together two critical aspects of IoT: reliable global connectivity and a mature application platform, enabling our customers to build solutions in less time than ever before — and deploy them worldwide,” Electric Imp Chief Executive Hugo Fiennes wrote in a blog post.
Electric Imp is the latest in a series of acquisitions Twilio has made in recent years to strategically expand high-priority parts of its portfolio. In 2018, the company acquired SendGrid for about $2 billion to extend its flagship communications APIs beyond SMS and voice to email.
The other players in the enterprise IoT market will likely be keeping a close eye on Twilio’s expansion efforts. Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC all offer cloud services for managing connected devices, as do a number of startups. One startup contender, Particle Industries Inc. raised a $40 million round backed by Qualcomm Inc. last year for a platform similar to Electric Imp’s that includes hardware, software and cloud solutions.
Photo of Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson: JD Lasica/Flickr
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