Twilio acquires Spanish WebRTC Media Server technology from Kurento

Developed by the Spanish team behind the renowned Kurento Open Source project, this acquisition will allow offering APIs in the cloud to build advanced video applications.

Twilio, an American company specialized in cloud-based communication platforms, has reached a definitive agreement to acquire WebRTC media processing technologies, developed by the Spanish team behind the famous project current Open Source. Upon completion of this transaction, this team will join Twilio to lead the integration of new technologies and enable the development of advanced videos in web and mobile applications.

Over the next few months following the closing of the transaction, Kurento's media server capabilities, including communication, transcoding, recording and advanced media processing, will be integrated into Twilio Programmable Video, a tool that makes it easier for developers to integrate video into applications. These new capabilities will enable developers to address the most advanced needs of large-scale consumer and enterprise video applications as well as next-generation video applications, such as those related to augmented reality, computer vision, robotics and the Internet of Things.

To date, the adoption of visual communication has largely been limited to conferencing systems and face-to-face applications for consumers. This is because advanced uses of video that require real-time media processing have been out of reach for mobile and web developers. While the WebRTC standard equips developers with client-side technology for adding videos, the media server infrastructure is expensive and requires implementing specific technical knowledge. Implementing advanced WebRTC media server technology to the Twilio Video platform will change this by enabling API access to real-time media processing. Developers will soon have the ability to analyze, transform, augment, and store audio and video streams to power various video applications.

Luis López, CEO and co-founder of the Kurento project, acknowledges that "when we started the Kurento project, we wanted to create a powerful media processing engine built for the WebRTC world. We knew that it would only be successful if we offered this capability as a cloud service and if we gave it to developers through a simple and well-built API. Twilio has one of the best sets of APIs and by joining forces with their team, we can fulfill this vision and bring our work to more than a million registered developers in Twilio.”

For his part, Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder of Twilio, highlights that his company and the team behind Kurento "share a common vision of supporting developers through powerful platforms and simple APIs. With this union Twilio takes another step in our mission to foster the future of communications by supporting developers. We are very happy to join forces with the Kurento developers to extend the uses of our video platform and we look forward to this moment."

Tikal Tecnologies, the company that originally developed Kurento, will maintain the Kurento Open Source project and will be responsible for managing contributions from the Kurento community. Twilio will work directly with Tikal to maintain and improve the project. This means stabilizing the core functionality of Kurento, improving compatibility with major WebRTC-enabled browsers, and receiving feedback directly from the Kurento community. Twilio intends to ensure that the Kurento Open Source project is a stable foundation for media processing applications in the future.

Presence in Spain

In addition, Twilio also announces the planned opening of the office in Madrid, which is the headquarters of the Kurento team. The opening of the Twilio office in Spain will be another step to meet the global needs of Twilio customers. The Madrid office will join Twilio's headquarters in San Francisco and its network of offices in Bogotá, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Mountain View, Munich, New York, Singapore and Tallinn.

The proposed transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2016 and financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed. For its part, Twilio will not update its financial situation from August 8, 2016 until the end of this year, specifically on December 31. The proposed acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on Twilio's results of operations or financial condition for the full year ending December 31, 2016.