"I take responsibility for choosing to grow our team faster... And now, I also own the decision to become more focused - resulting in this layoff," says CEO Jeff Lawson.
Who is being let go?
Twilio employees who work in go-to-market, research and development, as well as general and administrative departments are most likely to get fired.
"By no fault of the Twilions impacted today, we've curtailed our investment in areas of Go To Market where customers can succeed without as much human intervention, as well as making targeted changes to be more efficient in areas of R&D and G&A," Twilio's CEO said.
Twilio said it applied a "rigorous selection process" to determine which roles were most tightly aligned to its four priorities of platform investment, increasing messaging profitability, accelerating Segment adoption, and scaling its Flex customer base.
Additionally, Lawson said Twilio is committed to becoming "an anti-racist/anti-oppression" company.
He said layoffs "like this" can have a more "pronounced impact on marginalised communities, so we were particularly focused on ensuring our layoffs - while a business necessity today - were carried out through an anti-racist/anti-oppression lens."
