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SendGrid was founded in 2009 by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins. Later, it was incubated through the Techstars accelerator program. By December 2009, the company announced it had raised $750,000 in a funding round led by Highway 12 Ventures. Other participating investors included SoftTech VC, FF Angel, and TechStars founder David Cohen.
In April 2010, the email software-as-a-service (SaaS) company received $5 million in Series A round funding from Foundry Group, SoftTech VC, and Highway 12 Ventures, as well as individual investors including David Cohen, Scott Petry, Dave McClure, and Matt Mullenweg. Ryan McIntyre, the co-founder of Foundry, joined SendGrid's board of directors at this time as well.
In January 2012, SendGrid raised $21 million in Series B funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners. In August 2012, SendGrid opened an office in Denver. In December 2012, SendGrid partnered with Twilio to incorporate SMS and push notification services to its platform.
In March 2013, the controversial firing of Adria Richards and the surrounding circumstances became known as Donglegate. In June 2013, SendGrid released its new email marketing service.
In September 2014, former Citrix executive Sameer Dholakia joined SendGrid as the CEO. In December 2014, SendGrid raised $20 million in Series C funding. The series C round was led by a new investor Bain Capital Ventures. Current investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Foundry Group also participated.
In November 2016, SendGrid raised $33 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Ventures and the Foundry Group.
SendGrid went public with a debut in the New York Stock Exchange on November 16, 2017.
In October 2018, Twilio announced plans to acquire SendGrid for $2 billion. Twilio completed its acquisition of SendGrid on February 1, 2019.
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In May 2025, Twilio retired SendGrid's free email API plan and free marketing campaigns plan, requiring customers to transition to paid tiers. During Cyber Week 2025, SendGrid processed 75.1 billion emails, a 14.6% increase over the previous year's record. In February 2026, Twilio announced that the SendGrid.com website would be fully merged into Twilio.com, consolidating the brands after their 2019 acquisition.
From Wikipedia’s article on SendGrid, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7