As expected, Twilio has confirmed that it has agreed to acquire Segment for around $3.2bn in Class A common stock, the cloud communications company’s biggest acquisition to date. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

Twilio plans to use the addition of the customer data platform (CDP) to help businesses to better understand their customers through a single, unified view. Segment will become a division of Twilio.

“Data silos destroy great customer experiences,” said Jeff Lawson, Co-founder and CEO of Twilio. “Segment lets developers and companies break down those silos and build a complete picture of their customer. Combined with Twilios Customer Engagement Platform, we can create more personalised, timely and impactful engagement across customer service, marketing, analytics, product and sales. We are thrilled to welcome Segment to the Twilio team.”

Segment, founded in 2012, employs over 550 people and is used by more than 20,000 businesses, including Fox, Gap, Peloton, and Levi’s, to help manage their customer data.

The company raised $175m in a Series D funding round led by Accel, Google Ventures (GV), and Meritech Capital in April 2019, taking its total funding to over $280m.

“Together, Twilio and Segment have an incredible opportunity to build the customer engagement platform of the future,” said Peter Reinhardt, Segment’s Co-founder and CEO. “We created Segment to help businesses set themselves apart in the digital age and deliver rich, connected customer experiences built on high-quality data. By joining forces and applying our customer data platform to Twilio’s engagement cloud, we’ll be able to make the entire customer experience seamless from end-to-end.”