Jeff Lawson, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twilio Inc., center, rings the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Sept.17, 2018.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Activist investor Anson Funds has built a stake in Twilio and sent a letter to the enterprise software company’s board pushing for the sale of the entire business, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Twilio shares rose around 3% on the news in premarket trading.
Anson did not hold any Twilio stock for the period ending Sept. 30, according to securities filings, but has since built a stake valued at around $50 million, the person familiar said. The letter to the board urges Twilio to either sell itself or at a minimum, divest its data and applications business, the person familiar said.
The growth of the stake coincided with Anson’s hiring of Sagar Gupta from Legion Partners. Gupta led Legion’s activist engagements with Twilio and Nutanix, a cloud computing firm.
A spokesperson for Twilio was not immediately available for comment.
The news was first reported by The Information.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
