• by Ray Schultz , February 9, 2022

Twilio, parent of email service SendGrid, generated $2.84 billion in revenue for the year of 2021, including $200.9 million from Twilio Segment, its CDP, and $55.4 million from Zipwhip. 

Total revenue grew by 61%, while organic revenue grew by 42% YoY and 44% when excluding political traffic.

The company saw a GAAP loss from operations of $915.6 million, versus $492.9 million in 2020. 

Twilio had 256,000 active customer accounts as of December 31, 2021 compared to 221,000 in the prior year. The company foresees more than 30% organic growth over the next three years, and ongoing profitability beginning in 2023. 

Email is expected to play a major role.

“It won’t surprise most people to find out that our most scaled developer products are messaging and email, because email and messaging are so ubiquitous,” says Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder. “Every developer needs them in their toolbox, which is why SendGrid was a great acquisition and why our messaging business continues to deliver such great results.”

Also key to growth is the need for first-party data. 

“With recent Apple IDFA changes, Google’s planned deprecation of cookies, and increased global regulation of customer data, companies need to decrease their reliance on third-party data,” Lawson says. “Today Twilio Segment manages an enormous amount of first-party customer data but it’s a de minimis fraction of the total customer data that’s out there.”

In other news during the year, the firm launched Twilio Ventures, a $50 million fund for builders working on customer engagement, and named Eyal Manor as chief product officer and Dana Wagner as chief legal officer. 

Revenue for Q4 totaled $842.7 million, a 54% rise YoY. This included $57.4 from Twilio Segment and $31.8 million from Zipwhip. 

The GAAP loss from operations hit $283.million, up from $185.3 million from the same quarter in 2020.