Amsterdam-based cloud communication unicorn MessageBird has acquired Pusher in a $35 million (approx £26 million) deal. The news follows MessageBird’s recent $200 million (approx £148 million) Series C funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $3 billion (approx £2.2 billion) as it continues on the road to IPO.
Integrate real-time functionalities
Based out of London, Pusher provides tools and cloud infrastructure for developers to add real-time functionality to their apps, such as push notifications and messages
The UK platform has over 250,000 developer customers across 170 countries. It is used by various companies including, The New York Times, Mailchimp, Intercom, and Draft Kings. The company has delivered over 18 trillion messages across thousands of apps for its customers.
Why the acquisition?
This deal will give the Dutch platform access to a range of tools including in-app messaging, push notifications, and location tracking. It’s worth noting here that Pusher will continue to remain available as a standalone product and support for their existing customers.
“The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across all aspects of our lives. Consumers increasingly want businesses to communicate with them the way they communicate with their friends, on the apps they prefer. Bringing Pusher into the MessageBird family means it will be even easier for the 15,000 companies that rely on us to meet and communicate with their customers through messaging in whatever channel they prefer,“ said Robert Vis, MessageBird’s Founder & CEO.
Growing customer base
Pusher’s team will now become part of the growing MessageBird, and its customer base – which includes GitHub, MailChimp, CodeShip and The Financial Times – will join the likes of Deliveroo, Lufthansa Airlines, Heineken, Hugo Boss, Rituals Cosmetics and SAP, who are MessageBird users.
“We create and maintain complex infrastructure so that developers can build the real-time features their users need quickly and focus on the user experience,” explained Pusher CEO Max Williams. “Joining MessageBird is a special opportunity to accelerate the impact and reach of the product we’ve spent the last ten years building. We couldn’t be more excited to help make MessageBird an even better omnichannel communications service than it already is, and expand its reach and depth with a host of exciting new features.”
Simplifying customer communication
Founded by Adriaan Mol, and Robert Vis in 2011, European Twilio rival, MessageBird lets companies add a few lines of code to their app or website so customers can text, email or call-in with questions.
Twilio, the US software firm, and MessageBird play in the same space, but there are plenty of options that differentiate the two. The European company has raised over $300 million (approx £222 million) in funding to date and maintains offices in Amsterdam, San Francisco, Singapore, Bogota, London, Shanghai, Dublin, Hamburg, and Sydney.
The post Europe’s Twilio rival and almost ‘IPO-ready’ MessageBird acquires London notifications startup Pusher for £26M, here’s why? appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).
