MessageBird, a profitable Dutch rival to Twilio, has raised $60 million for its messaging API

Robert Vis MessageBird

Stealth Dutch startup MessageBird has raised $60 million (£45 million) in Series A funding from Accel in the US, Atomico in the UK, and Y Combinator.

It's the biggest round of Series A funding in an active European startup — inauspiciously, the biggest overall Series A round was in Powa at $76 million (then £52.5 million), but the company spectacularly went bust.

MessageBird is headquartered in Amsterdam, with offices in in the US and across Europe. Like larger rival Twilio, MessageBird offers a text messaging API to developers, who use its service to add voice, chat, and messaging to their apps. According to its site, it is used by Uber, Telegram, and Huawei.

The company claims to be profitable with bootstrapped funding, with a predicted run rate of $100 million (£75 million) this year. It has 15,000 business customers.

The new funding will help the company grow more quickly. Accel partner Miles Clements and Atomico partner Hiro Tamura will join the startup's board.

MessageBird chief executive Robert Vis said: "The capital investment needed today to enable global communications is considerably less than even 5 years ago. With API’s and software there is no need for expensive hardware and the cloud has enabled us to offer a low-latency network that complies with all local security and data retention laws. We’ve already built the world’s largest and most reliable text message API service for enterprises, now we are raising capital from the two leading investors in Silicon Valley and Europe to expand our voice infrastructure and sell our services into the enterprise market."

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