Understand any stock in simple English
Enter a ticker to learn what the company does and how it makes money.
MessageBird B.V.
Bird is a communications software company that helps businesses send messages, run marketing campaigns, and talk to customers across channels like WhatsApp, SMS, and email.
Bird — formerly known as MessageBird — sells the behind-the-scenes plumbing that lets a company talk to its customers. When your bank texts you a one-time code, a delivery app pings you that your driver is nearby, or a store sends you a "we miss you" discount, there's a good chance software like Bird's is moving that message along. It connects businesses to the big messaging channels — WhatsApp, SMS, email, voice, and others — through one system, so a company doesn't have to build separate integrations for each one.
The business started in Amsterdam in 2011, founded by Robert Vis, and grew into one of Europe's more prominent software startups. It raised a lot of venture money and at one point was valued at several billion dollars. The core product today is a customer communications platform: businesses use it to send notifications, run marketing campaigns, provide customer support, and manage conversations with buyers across all those channels from a single dashboard. It also sells tools for building and automating those conversations, and it has leaned hard into an AI assistant that can handle customer messages automatically. Bird makes money in two main ways. First, it charges a fee to route messages — the "pipes" business, where it takes a small cut on top of what the underlying carriers and channel providers charge. Second, it sells software subscriptions for the platform and automation tools. The routing business is large but low-margin and competitive, with rivals like Twilio Twilio fighting for the same traffic. The software side is stickier and more profitable, which is why Bird pushes hard in that direction.
The company's story has had rough patches. It spent aggressively to expand, made acquisitions, and went through a restructuring that included layoffs and a rebrand from MessageBird to Bird in 2023. Its valuation dropped sharply from its peak as investors soured on high-spending growth companies. The bet now is that combining cheap message routing with higher-margin software and AI automation gives customers a reason to stay — and gives Bird a path to real profits rather than just revenue growth.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026