Sinch is a Sweden-based cloud communications company that provides messaging, calling and marketing (engagement) APIs for developers and enterprises. The company has pursued acquisition-led growth—after raising $690 million from SoftBank in December—to expand geographic reach and service offerings. It is publicly traded in Sweden with a market cap of about $13 billion. Sinch announced it is acquiring Inteliquent for $1.14 billion in cash, giving it a significant foothold in the U.S. voice market against rivals like Twilio. To finance the deal it raised SEK8.2 billion (~$986M) from Handelsbanken and Danske Bank and used other existing facilities. The acquisition complements Sinch’s recent purchases (for example ACL in India for $70M and SAP’s digital interconnect business for $250M) and is intended to strengthen its combined voice and messaging capabilities. Sinch provides cloud-based omnichannel voice, video and messaging services that help enterprises communicate with customers across mobile and digital channels. The platform focuses on mobile messaging and other digital channels to support customer experience and omnichannel engagement. The company is publicly traded on Sweden’s stock exchange and has a market cap of SEK 70 billion (about $8.2 billion). Sinch is profitable and generating cash, and previously paid $250 million to acquire SAP’s Digital Interconnect unit, which added roughly 1,500 enterprise customers, mostly in the U.S. Management says the company does not need to raise funding for ongoing operations, but plans to use proceeds from the recent share sale for further M&A. Demand for digital customer engagement has increased during COVID-19, which Sinch expects to capitalise on as it pursues additional acquisitions and expands its offering. Sinch was spun out of Rebtel to offer communications tools to mobile developers, providing messaging and voice calling SDKs and APIs for iOS and Android. The company enables app-to-app calling, instant and group messaging, SMS and call termination inside apps. Sinch says it can price many services below competitors like Twilio by leveraging Rebtel's licensing deals and partnerships, and its services are paid rather than free. Pricing for app-to-app calling and instant messaging is based on active users and minutes/messages used, while app-to-phone calling and SMS are charged per-minute or per-SMS. Sinch has about 40 employees and maintains offices in Stockholm and San Francisco. The spinout received $12 million in funding from Rebtel to launch as a standalone company.

Total raised

$1.4B

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Debt Financing

Latest activity

Feb 2021