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Braze, Bandwidth, and now Klaviyo joined Twilio, Sinch, and LINK with a share buyback program. In a sector that has taken a shellacking, buybacks signal confidence in the company and in the market around it. But not all buybacks are the same.
The Real Divide
The cleaner split is not US vs. Europe or large vs. small. It’s whether these companies are doing it at the right time in their public company journey.
Twilio is the cleanest case. In 2025, revenue grew 14% to $5.07B and free cash flow reached $945.4M. Twilio’s non-GAAP R&D expense was $679.8M, about 13.4% of revenue. The buyback looks like discipline.
The Overfunded Organization
There comes a time for every software company when money stops being the bottleneck. The constraint becomes absorption capacity. How many product bets can the organization really handle? How much engineering can you add before coordination costs eat the gain? How many managers can you fund before innovation turns into ceremony?
This is the part executives rarely say out loud: An org can be overfunded. Too much money does not always produce more invention. Sometimes it produces organizational fat. Every director suddenly needs a strategic initiative. Every team needs a deck. Every quarter requires an offsite meeting in Half Moon Bay for strategic alignment, as if catered self-reflection were a substitute for product judgment.
That is why Twilio’s buyback looks normal. A mature company should not keep spending in the name of innovation. At some point, the right answer is to keep funding the roadmap, keep shipping, keep growing, and return the excess cash.
Braze, Bandwidth, Klaviyo: Closer to Twilio
Braze, Bandwidth and Klaviyo appear closer to Twilio’s camp than to Sinch and LINK.
Braze just authorized a $100M repurchase program, including an approximately $50M accelerated share repurchase, while still spending heavily on R&D in fiscal 2026. Klaviyo announced a $500M share repurchase program with an initial $100M accelerated share repurchase.
Bandwidth authorized its first $80M buyback in February 2026 and paired it with continued product investment. None of the three look like a company starving the roadmap.
Sinch and LINK: Same Path, Different Lane
Buybacks can be sensible for different reasons. Sinch and LINK feel more like companies signaling belief while parts of the growth story are still being worked through. They are buying because their stocks are undervalued.
But as a percentage of revenue, Sinch’s R&D is much lower than that of Twilio or Braze. And while LINK’s R&D spend is harder to unpack, its M&A strategy has been more accretive to profitability than to innovation. The sharper question is whether the next dollar belongs in product or to the shareholder.
Finally
Both strategies can be true. You can buyback shares on the cheap, and increase your R&D spend. Capital allocation, after all, is a judgment call. The real question is whether management has already exhausted the best internal uses of capital.
A buyback looks different when it comes from a company that is still funding the roadmap, is generating real cash, and no longer has an obvious high-return use for every marginal dollar inside the org. That is why Twilio stands out. Braze, Bandwidth, and Klaviyo look closer to that camp. Sinch and LINK may get there too, and their buybacks already say something useful about confidence. But the headline is not buybacks; it’s where each company is on its journey, and what management thinks the next best dollar should do.