Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson. Photo credit: Web Summit on Flickr, under Creative Commons license

Cloud communications company Twilio has reached a deal to acquire Segment, a customer data infrastructure company, for a total of $3.2 billion, according to a report by Forbes. Although reported by Forbes, a formal deal doesn’t appear to have yet been finalized, with no official press statement released on such acquisition for now. A $3.2 billion purchase price would mark Twilio’s biggest acquisition ever and its eighth acquisition so far since its inception. It’ll particularly mark a big win for Segment, which was valued at $1.5 billion from its most recent financing round and has raised about $284 million in total funding as a private company.

Through this year, Twilio has seen its stock soar high as a coronavirus pandemic has led swaths of people to work and conduct business remotely and, in turn, largely boosted the demand for cloud communication services like Twilio. It’s such that Twilio’s share price has soared over 200% this year, with the company having a current market capitalization of over $45 billion. With such a soaring stock, it seems that Twilio will likely make use of its shares to finance a $3 billion+ acquisition of Segment. 

Segment as a company was founded in 2012. It’s basically a platform that helps enterprises to collect and manage customer data. As a private company, Segment is backed by some of the technology industry’s biggest names, among them Accel, Sapphire Ventures, Thrive Capital, Alphabet’s GV, New Enterprise Associates, and Y Combinator, the famous startup accelerator which Segment passed through. A $3.2 billion exit would notably mark one of the biggest ever for a Y Combinator alum.