# Bird

> Bird, founded in Amsterdam in 2011 as MessageBird, is a communications infrastructure and AI-first CRM company that lets businesses send and receive email, SMS, voice, WhatsApp, RCS and push messages through a single API and a single contract. Rather than reselling other carriers' capacity, the company built its own telecom stack - roughly 240 direct-to-carrier SMS connections across 190-plus countries - and says about 40% of the world's commercial messages now transit its network. After a $1 billion Series C at a $3 billion valuation and the $600 million acquisition of email platform SparkPost, it rebranded to Bird in 2024, cut SMS prices by up to 90% to attack Twilio's margins, and rebuilt its product around AI agents that can act on customer data across marketing, service and payments. In 2025 it reported roughly $244 million in net revenue with $157 million in adjusted EBITDA, and it is now restructuring around US customers who account for about three quarters of its revenue.

- **Founded:** 2011
- **Headquarters:** Amsterdam, Netherlands
- **Founders:** Robert Vis (Co-founder & CEO), Adriaan Mol (Co-founder (also founder of Mollie))
- **Team size:** Several hundred employees globally after successive reductions - roughly one third of staff (120 roles) cut in February 2025 and about 20% of global headcount cut in May 2026, with the bulk falling on Europe. Down from about 700 employees at the 2021 peak.
- **Products:** SMS API, Email API, WhatsApp Business API, Voice API, RCS, Push and Realtime
- **Notable:** Bootstrapped profitably for five years before taking any outside capital, Raised what was then the largest Series C in Europe - $1B in total across the round and its extension, Reached a $3B valuation in 2020, becoming one of the Netherlands' most valuable private tech companies

## Products & services

- **SMS API** — Global A2P SMS built on roughly 240 direct-to-carrier connections across 190+ countries, including A2P 10DLC brand vetting in the US and sub-three-second delivery of six-digit codes.
- **Email API** — Transactional and marketing email inherited from the SparkPost acquisition - DKIM/SPF/DMARC signing, managed dedicated IPs with automatic warmup, suppression lists, inbound parsing and ISP-level analytics. Free tier of 1,000 emails a month; paid from roughly $0.30 per 1,000.
- **WhatsApp Business API** — Official WhatsApp Business Platform access for notifications, support and conversational commerce, threaded with other channels in a single customer conversation.
- **Voice API** — Programmable voice, IVR and streaming text-to-speech in 30+ languages with sub-250ms first-byte audio.
- **RCS, Push and Realtime** — Rich Communication Services messaging, mobile push, and the WebSocket/realtime layer acquired with Pusher.
- **Verify and Lookup** — One-time-password verification and phone number intelligence for onboarding, fraud prevention and list hygiene.
- **Bird CRM** — AI-first CRM spanning marketing, service, sales and payments - built on the customer data platform acquired with Hull.io and launched alongside the 2024 rebrand.
- **Journeys** — Multi-channel marketing automation that runs email, SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, push and web chat inside a single workflow.
- **AI agents** — Custom AI employees that hold customer conversations across email, SMS and WhatsApp simultaneously and take actions on platform data rather than only answering questions.
- **Conversations API / Inbox** — Unifies SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, email, Instagram Direct and other channels into one thread per customer for support and engagement teams.

## Achievements

- Bootstrapped profitably for five years before taking any outside capital
- Raised what was then the largest Series C in Europe - $1B in total across the round and its extension
- Reached a $3B valuation in 2020, becoming one of the Netherlands' most valuable private tech companies
- Acquired SparkPost for $600M in cash in 2021, the largest email infrastructure deal of its era
- Bought the bird.com domain in 2022 for a reported $10M, outbidding the Bird scooter company
- Says roughly 40% of the world's commercial messages transit its network
- Processed 19.9 billion emails over Black Friday weekend 2025
- Reported $157M adjusted EBITDA and about $149M free cash flow on ~$244M net revenue in 2025
- Trusted by more than 450,000 developers

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Bird cut about 20% of global headcount, concentrated in Europe, with Vis citing the shift of customers to the US, AI-driven productivity, and what he called over-regulation and a poor climate for tech companies in the EU.
- **2026-02** — Reported 2025 results: roughly $244M net revenue (up ~18%), $157M adjusted EBITDA and about $149M free cash flow, with 75% of revenue from US-headquartered companies.
- **2025-11** — Processed 19.9 billion emails over Black Friday weekend, its largest recorded volume.
- **2025-02** — Cut 120 jobs - roughly a third of the workforce - and announced a shift from an Amsterdam headquarters to strategic hubs in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Singapore, Dubai, Lithuania, Istanbul and Thailand.
- **2024-02** — Rebranded from MessageBird to Bird, launched an AI-first CRM covering marketing, service and payments, and cut SMS prices by up to 90% in a campaign aimed directly at Twilio.

## Links

- Website: https://bird.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/birdhq/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/messagebird
- GitHub: https://github.com/messagebird

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/bird
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-05