Latest news with #Twilio
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
These Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Are Quietly Outperforming the Market
Two AI stocks have crushed the broader market in the past year, and they seem primed for more upside. Fast-growing demand for AI tools in cloud-based services is helping these companies attract new customers. 10 stocks we like better than Twilio › Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks have been in fine form on the market in the past few years, and that's not surprising, as this technology has supercharged the growth of many companies. Thanks to huge investments in AI hardware such as semiconductors, as well as the rapidly growing adoption of AI software to boost productivity, it is estimated that overall spending on AI could hit a massive $628 billion by 2028. This explains why investors have been buying AI stocks hand over fist. However, there are certain AI stocks that have significantly outpaced the broader stock market, and importantly, they still have the potential to deliver more upside. Let's take a closer look at these two names that aren't all that popular, but have been outperforming the market in the past year. Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) stock is up an impressive 115% in the past year as of this writing, easily outperforming the 11% gains clocked by the Nasdaq Composite over the same period. The good part is that Twilio still trades at an attractive 26 times forward earnings and 4 times sales, even after its terrific surge in the past year. The valuation makes buying Twilio stock a no-brainer right now, especially considering how AI now plays an important role in accelerating its growth. Twilio's application programming interfaces (APIs) allow its clients to connect with their customers through various channels such as voice, text, email, video, chat, and others. Twilio points out that its customer engagement platform is used by more than 300,000 enterprises globally. Specifically, the company ended the first quarter of 2025 with more than 335,000 active customer accounts, an increase of 7% from the previous year. This huge customer base is a key reason why one can consider buying Twilio stock right now, as it gives the company the opportunity to cross-sell its AI offerings to a big pool of customers. Twilio has been offering multiple AI tools to customers, such as generative AI-powered assistants that can help tackle customer service queries autonomously, integrating human-like conversational AI assistants to talk to customers in real time and derive critical insights from customers' data with the help of AI. The growing demand for these AI services helps Twilio win more business from existing customers. This is evident from the five-percentage-point jump in fiscal 2025 Q1's dollar-based net expansion rate compared to the first quarter of 2024. The higher customer spending, along with an increase in Twilio's customer base, are the reasons why it has raised its full-year organic revenue growth guidance to 8% from the earlier forecast of 7.5%. This combination of higher customer spending, along with an increase in the customer count, explains why analysts expect a 24% increase in Twilio's earnings this year, followed by impressive growth over the next couple of years as well. Assuming Twilio indeed generates $6.21 per share in earnings after a couple of years and trades at 30 times earnings at that time (in line with the tech-laden Nasdaq-100 index's forward earnings multiple), its stock price could jump to $186. That would be a 59% jump from current levels. So, investors can expect more upside from this AI stock going forward, which is why it would be a smart idea to consider buying it while it trades at attractive levels. Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) share prices have jumped an impressive 64% in the past year despite bouts of volatility, and a closer look at the price chart will tell us that the stock has made a sharp move up in the past couple of months. Importantly, more upside in Snowflake stock cannot be ruled out, as fast-growing adoption of the company's AI-focused data cloud tools is helping it build a robust revenue pipeline for the future. Snowflake's data cloud platform enables customers to safely store their data in a single platform, which can then be used to derive insights and build applications. The company's AI-specific tools are now helping customers get more out of their data. They can apply large language models (LLMs) to their data to build applications such as AI agents, generative AI assistants, and search documents through natural language prompts, among other things. These offerings are turning out to be a hit among Snowflake customers, with nearly 45% of its 11,600-strong customer base using its AI tools every week in the previous quarter. Additionally, AI is helping Snowflake attract more customers. This is evident from the 19% year-over-year increase in its customer count in Q1 of fiscal 2026. This combination of an increase in Snowflake's customer base, along with the growing adoption of its AI tools, is the reason why its remaining performance obligations (RPO) increased by an impressive 34% year over year in the previous quarter to $6.7 billion, which was better than the 26% growth in its product revenue to just under $1 billion. The strong growth in its revenue pipeline encouraged management to increase its fiscal 2026 revenue guidance as well. What's more, Snowflake's earnings are expected to increase by a third in the current fiscal year to $1.10 per share. Consensus estimates project faster growth over the next couple of fiscal years. That won't be surprising, as Snowflake's ability to win more business from its existing customers and an improvement in its overall customer count should allow it to continue improving its revenue pipeline, especially considering that it sees its total addressable market growing to a whopping $342 billion in 2028. In all, Snowflake investors can expect more upside from this cloud stock following the impressive gains that it has delivered in the past year, driven by a new catalyst in the form of AI. Before you buy stock in Twilio, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Twilio wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $891,722!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 Harsh Chauhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Snowflake and Twilio. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. These Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Are Quietly Outperforming the Market was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Twilio Expands RCS With Orange: Will Secure Messaging Drive Growth?
Twilio TWLO is taking another step toward transforming business messaging through its new partnership with Orange to scale Rich Communication Services (RCS) across France. This move could help Twilio strengthen its presence in Europe while meeting growing demand for more secure, interactive and engaging messaging is seen as the natural evolution of SMS, offering businesses features like branded messages, images, carousels, actionable buttons and verified sender identity. In France, RCS messaging now covers more than 70% of smartphones, and projections indicate this will climb to 85% coverage by the end of growth opens significant market potential for Twilio. According to the company's own research, 81% of consumers prefer RCS over SMS, and 75% of businesses plan to invest in it this demand for cloud communication services continues to grow, security remains at the forefront of enterprise priorities. Twilio's RCS addresses this by enabling verified, branded communication that builds consumer more companies look to stand out in crowded digital channels, secure and trusted messaging could become a key growth driver for Twilio's communications platform. In the first quarter of 2025, the communication segment delivered $1.10 billion in revenues, reflecting a 13% year-over-year increase. Messaging remains the largest revenue contributor to this growth, supported by rising adoption across key international markets such as Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. Twilio faces formidable competition from Bandwidth Inc. BAND, a CPaaS provider distinguished by its ownership of a Tier 1 global network. Bandwidth's diversified client base, spanning telecom operators to tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Cisco, reflects its strong developer trust and platform flexibility. Bandwidth's ability to embed voice, messaging, and 911 services directly into applications makes it a strategic choice for embedded communications, boosting its revenue Inc. RNG challenges Twilio with a full-stack UCaaS platform offering integrated voice, video, messaging and contact center capabilities. RingCentral's subscription model ensures steady cash flow, while its recent AI innovations, like AI Receptionist and RingSense, position RingCentral as a leader in intelligent enterprise communications. Shares of Twilio have returned 7.9% year to date compared with the Zacks Internet – Software industry's growth of 12.9%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, TWLO trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 3.58, significantly below the industry's average of 5.67. The company carries a Value Score of F. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Twilio's 2025 earnings is pegged at $4.49 per share, revised downward by a cent over the past 30 days. The estimated earnings figure suggests year-over-year growth of 22.34%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Twilio currently flaunts a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Ringcentral, Inc. (RNG) : Free Stock Analysis Report Twilio Inc. (TWLO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Bandwidth Inc. (BAND) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO— What Brands Need To Know
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 17, 2018: A passenger waiting to board his plane walks in ... More front of a sign advertising Twilio at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California. Twilio is a cloud communications platform based in San Francisco. (Photo by) We studied that traffic from ChatGPT-style experiences converts up to 9x better than traditional search. Why? Because LLMs behave more like trusted advisors than search engines. This shift is already transforming how consumers discover and buy — and if your brand isn't showing up in these conversations, you're invisible. In this article, I'll break down what Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) means, how brands can train LLMs to recognize them. Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring content so that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can understand, reference, and recommend your brand in response to user questions. To get picked up by an LLM, you need to understand how these models learn from content. LLMs get trained to complete sentences. Like: 'Life is like a box of chocolate'. During training the machine would just mask a word at random and then try to predict it. To show up in an LLM's response, your content needs to become part of the training data of LLM. Here are a few tips for businesses: You can't just dump your product catalog into the web and hope LLMs use it. It will scrape it, but it won't use it. Marketing copy won't cut it. LLMs learn through natural dialogue — not taglines. Brands need to shift from static, keyword-based content to dynamic, conversational material. Think less like a brochure, and more like a smart rep answering real customer questions. This is where SEO breaks down — it was built around isolated keywords. LLMs require context. LLMs skip over what they already know. If your content says 'The earth is round,' it won't register — the model already has that data. You need to find in your data something that new or less known about your brand, product, or category. The most valuable content is the stuff the model hasn't seen yet — helpful, real, and grounded in authentic conversation. Some things don't change. Just like in the SEO world, credibility still matters. High-quality content that gets linked, quoted, and validated across sources builds authority. Spam doesn't work. If your brand voice isn't trusted — or doesn't exist — LLMs won't echo it. Every time a new tech trend takes off — AEO is one — Silicon Valley races to build tools around it. AEO is no exception. The latest wave includes dashboards designed to track your brand's presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other platforms. A few examples are Profound, Daydream and Goodie. All Track brand mentions across AI platforms. But here's the problem: LLMs don't behave like search engines. They remember. This was not the case in the search era. Google, for example, did not remember your searches. When I worked on Google Health, this was a common complaint from doctors: Google would always return the same results, even if you had already clicked those links before. Every new session was a reset. There was no context. That's no longer true. Ask ChatGPT what it knows about you — you'll see. These models build context. They recall prior interactions. And that memory shapes future recommendations. That however means that monitoring any LLM answers miss the point. As the LLMs memory evolves, and so do the outputs. To fully understand how your brand is being represented, you'd have to know the personalized memory of every single user — an impossible task for any dashboard. So what's the smarter approach? You want to know the traffic. Just watch your traffic. Look at what's actually coming in from ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity. It's cheaper, more reliable — and shows you what really matters. Measurements are just half the rent. To impact the LLMs trainings data, you need new brand content. The old SEO playbook does not work anymore. Your brand has unique knowledge. It has a vision. Don't hide it behind generic product listings. Let's say someone searches for a 'retirement watch.' Don't just list five SKUs. Explain what makes a great retirement watch. Legacy? Legibility? Sentimental value? Engage the customer into an authentic conversation. That's the kind of context LLMs are trained to pick up. In short: show the real conversations you're already having. Look at your site search queries, your sales team scripts, your support chats. That's gold. LLMs thrive on the kind of content that sounds like a helpful human. Here's how to approach it: Some brands already have this content out in the open — in community forums, Reddit threads, or customer discussions. They'll naturally surface in LLM results. Others have great content buried in customer service logs or internal tools. That needs to come out. Structure it. Publish it. Make it discoverable. Many tools can help you here: Google's Vertex, Meta's LLama, or fine-tuned industry specific approaches like r2decide, a company I am involved with. AEO is just the beginning. Two even bigger shifts are on the horizon — and both will deeply impact how brands show up in the age of AI. LLMs will soon integrate advertising directly into their answers. Google, Perplexity, and OpenAI have all confirmed this. When exactly? Probably by early 2025 — if not sooner. But don't expect just ads or sponsored results. These models will deliver recommendations, at the end you pay for the service of ChatGPT, thus the dynamic is changing. To do that, new supply-side bidding platforms will emerge — ones that can feed LLMs with conversational ad snippets tailored to the user's prompt. The focus won't be on 'selling,' but on helping. That means brands will need their own brand-side LLM — a layer that can speak for the company inside these conversations and provide the right product at the right moment. The next wave is even bigger: agents that manage full transactions inside the LLM interface. OpenAI has already introduced Model Context Protocols (MCPs) — a new layer that allows ChatGPT to do more than chat. It can check stock, answer personalized questions, even schedule deliveries. Sam Altman has said the goal is to create personal AI companions that can act — not just inform. For brands, that means building an agent layer of your own — a system that can plug into these conversations, respond with tailored info, and complete the customer journey without sending the user back to your website. To stay relevant, brands need their own discovery layer: content that speaks the language of LLMs — conversational, helpful, and ready to be recommended. This isn't theory. The shift is already underway. If you want to dive deeper, ping me on LinkedIn.
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
98% of Indian consumers buy more with real-time personalisation: Report
A new report from Twilio, the customer engagement platform, indicates a significant embrace of artificial intelligence (AI) among Indian consumers for personalised experiences . However, the findings also highlight a continued desire for human interaction and transparency, suggesting a need for brands to balance technological advancement with authentic engagement. Twilio's sixth annual State of Customer Engagement Report, based on a global survey including Indian consumers and business leaders, reveals that while AI is delivering measurable results for businesses, customer perception is still catching up. A notable gap exists between what brands believe they are providing and what customers genuinely experience. Indian businesses are increasingly adopting AI to tailor customer experiences, analysing data for consistent communication across various channels and to meet evolving customer expectations. These efforts appear to be yielding positive results, with close to eight in ten (79 per cent) Indian consumers reporting increased spending with brands that personalise their engagement. Furthermore, 98 per cent state they are more likely to purchase when engagement is personalised in real-time. The report also notes that 90 per cent of Indian consumers value personalisation, expecting it to provide relevant recommendations (71 per cent), simplify shopping (66 per cent), and enhance confidence in a brand's legitimacy (65 per cent). Despite these positive indicators, customer sentiment is not without its complexities. While 80 per cent of Indian consumers believe brands do a good or excellent job at personalisation, only 30 per cent feel that engagement happens consistently. This inconsistency presents an opportunity for brands to evolve from isolated personalised interactions to continuous, individualised experiences. The impact of this disconnect is tangible: 70 per cent of Indian consumers are "much more likely" to purchase with personalized engagement, while 88 per cent will abandon a purchase if the interaction feels impersonal. Conversely, the 98 per cent of Indian consumers more likely to make purchases with real-time personalized engagements underscore the potential for brands to align AI-driven automation with actual customer experience for improved conversions. Despite the growing acceptance of AI, Indian consumers continue to value human involvement in their brand interactions. A significant 91 per cent believe it is important for AI-powered brand interactions to feel human-like. More than half (55 per cent) also expressed a desire for the option to speak with a person if AI fails to effectively resolve their issue. Transparency also emerges as a key factor. Over seven in ten (72 per cent) consumers want to be aware when they are interacting with AI, highlighting the importance for brands to implement clear visibility and control measures. Additionally, a majority (87 per cent) of Indian consumers prefer to choose how brands communicate with them, rather than having AI agents automatically determine their preferences. This indicates a desire for continued control and autonomy in their interactions. "Indian consumers are increasingly aware that while AI-powered personalisation influences buying behaviour, it is not a substitute for relevance, trust and human connection," stated Nicholas Kontopoulos, VP of marketing, Asia Pacific and Japan at Twilio. He added, "Indian brands are already leading the way, demonstrating a deep understanding of the importance of AI and excelling at delivering personalised experiences. As they continue to scale their use of AI, the next step is to move beyond basic personalisation to true individualisation, where every interaction feels timely, contextual, and humanised. This means putting transparency at the centre, respecting customer preferences, and using data to serve, not just sell. The brands that will lead in India's next wave of growth are those that get this balance right by blending intelligent automation with authentic engagement to earn loyalty and drive long-term impact.' The report concludes that in a competitive market where customer loyalty is increasingly difficult to secure, brands can no longer view trust and personalisation as optional. The 2025 State of Customer Engagement Report suggests that basic personalisation is no longer sufficient. The future of customer engagement lies in individualisation, built upon relevant, timely, tailored, and trustworthy customer interactions. By investing in transparent, data-driven and AI-powered engagement strategies, Indian brands have an opportunity to bridge the expectation gap, build trust, deepen relationships and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Jefferies Raises Twilio (TWLO)'s Price Target — But Cautions on Most Optimistic Forecasts
Twilio Inc. (NYSE:TWLO) is one of the . On June 15, Jefferies analyst Samad Samana raised the firm's price target on the stock to $132 from $122 and kept a 'Hold' rating on the shares. The analyst told investors in a research note how investors have been debating whether growth can accelerate against the second-half of the year comparisons. They are wondering whether gross margins will rebound or if healthy EBIT beats are sustainable. A financial analyst studying the fundamentals of a co-managed portfolio of mid-cap companies. According to the firm, growth acceleration for Twilio is achievable and makes for a 'good tactical setup' in the shares. However, it doesn't think that most bullish assumptions are achievable. Twilio Inc. (NYSE:TWLO) is a leading cloud communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) company. While we acknowledge the potential of TWLO as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: and Disclosure: None.
