Bird.com, the company formerly known as MessageBird, has secured $450 million in debt financing. That’s a $400 million term loan plus a $50 million revolving credit facility, structured as a dividend recapitalization. J.P. Morgan led as joint lead arranger, bookrunner and administrative agent, alongside Capital One and Citi. Silicon Valley Bank, MUFG, Flagstar and Huntington round out the syndicate.
Big banks don’t lend $400 million to startups on hope. Bird earned $165 million in EBITDA in 2025, and that’s what makes this deal possible.
From 1,000 people to 120
Bird’s story over the past few years is a dramatic shrink. The company once had more than 1,000 employees. It now runs with about 120, having automated most of its operations, while still moving trillions of messages a year across more than 150 countries.
“Half the apps on your phone rely on our infrastructure, and yet we’re running this business at a fraction of the size we used to be,” says founder and CEO Robert Vis, who started the company in 2011. Bird is now based in New York and Amsterdam.
A phone number for your AI agent
Alongside the financing, Bird relaunched its Agentic Harness platform, which gives AI agents their own way to communicate with the world. Through it an agent can send texts, place and handle phone calls, send and manage email, and even get an eSIM phone plan on Bird’s network. Routing and inbox delivery happen without a human in the loop. It works with models and tools including ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor.
Bird says some of its channels cost up to 90% less than competitors’.
Agents that can actually reach people need the same plumbing businesses use for texts and calls: sender reputation, carrier relationships, deliverability. Bird already runs that plumbing at global scale. Now it wants AI agents as customers.