Twilio to lay off about 1,500 employees, or 17% of its workforce

Twilio on Monday announced plans to cut around 17% of its workforce, or roughly 1,500 jobs based on the 8,992 employees reported as of Sept. 30, 2022, in a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Twilio announced the layoffs in a blog post shared on its website.

The announcement came after the cloud communications software maker already laid off around 11% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan in September.

In an email Monday to employees, CEO Jeff Lawson said the additional cuts were driven by the need to reorganize Twilio in order to succeed. “These changes hurt,” he wrote. “The weeks ahead will be about processing all this change and working together to acclimate to our new structure.”

Shares of Twilio were up more than 2% in morning trading Monday.

Lawson said Twilio is forming two business units to help the company spend less and become more efficient. One unit, Twilio Data & Applications, will be led by Elena Donio, and the second unit, Twilio Communications, will be led by Khozema Shipchandler. Lawson said that when executives were looking at these two business units, it was clear the company had gotten “too big,” particularly in communications.

Lawson said it is clear that Twilio needed to carry out “significant structural changes” in order to better execute its strategy.

“It is painful to part ways with so many talented people – but it’s necessary to get our two businesses into the right shape to succeed,” he said.

Twilio is one of more than a dozen tech companies to announce layoffs in recent months. Last week, Dell, Zoom and eBay disclosed significant cuts to their workforce. In January, Google revealed plans to lay off more than 12,000 workers, Microsoft announced plans to cut 10,000 employees and Salesforce said it planned to lay off 7,000 workers.