SIGNAL 2025 Recap: Builders Assemble!

SIGNAL 2025 Recap: Builders Assemble!

From the moment the doors opened at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, SIGNAL 2025 had one message for our developer community: Builders, Assemble!

Over two days, 850+ developers, engineers, and builders from across the world immersed themselves in the future of customer engagement. SIGNAL 2025 wasn't just about launches (though it had those). It was about giving builders the how, showing off real code, and letting attendees experience Twilio's capabilities hands-on. If you missed – or want to relive – the hype, here's a recap of everything SIGNAL 2025 delivered.

Inside the Builder Keynote and product launches at SIGNAL 2025

This year's Builder Keynote zoomed in on how—not just what or why—the Twilio platform lets builders scale globally, embrace AI, and build trusted connections.

Over the past year, Twilio's platform handled more than 900 billion API requests (peaking at 31,000 requests per second), while Segment processed an average of 350,000 events per second, spiking beyond 1.2 million. This massive scale is only possible with a platform built around trust, transparency, and reliability, serving a global community of over 10 million builders.

Against this backdrop, the keynote introduced some of the most impactful new features and launches – each aimed at making it faster and easier for developers to deliver trusted, AI-powered experiences at scale.

Twilio's Conversational AI

Twilio's Conversational AI brings together the power of human conversation and next-gen AI – connecting channels like Voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and web chat into a seamless, unified experience. This platform eliminates classic hurdles for developers and architects such as complex LLM integrations, speech recognition, messy cross-channel orchestration, and the challenge of gathering usable, real-time data for optimization and compliance.

At SIGNAL 2025, we made two announcements central to this strategy:

1. ConversationRelay

ConversationRelay is Twilio's conversational AI capability designed for developers. Now generally available, it simplifies building advanced, natural voice AI agents with features like interruption handling, advanced speech recognition, and expressive voices.

ConversationRelay supports integrations with top text-to-speech and speech-to-text partners like ElevenLabs, Deepgram, Google, and Amazon, and lets you bring your own LLM.

Here's how to generate the necessary TwiML for ConversationRelay in Node.js:

ConversationRelay helps you build dynamic call flows—whether you're setting up AI agents to assist your customers with questions, or orchestrating advanced multi-agent conversations.

For more details, visit the Twilio ConversationRelay docs.

1. Conversational Intelligence

Conversational Intelligence, now generally available for Voice and in private beta for Messaging, provides automated analysis of both voice calls and text-based conversations. It lets you analyze interactions across your channels, quickly identifying sentiment, intent, and points of friction for each customer. It also allows you to build Custom Operators, which let you describe – in natural language – how you'd like to analyze your transcripts.

Check out the Conversational Intelligence docs to learn more.

Messaging Channels Upgrades for RCS and WhatsApp

Rich Communication Services

RCS (Rich Communication Services) moves to General Availability across 19 countries later this year, with branded, interactive cards, quick replies, and verified business profiles. Best of all? It takes no code to upgrade!

To start, create an RCS Sender in the Console.

Then, follow Twilio's guide to submit the compliance information necessary to send messages to all users.

Next, add the RCS Sender to the Sender pool of your Twilio Messaging Service.

Send your first RCS message:

The Content Template Builder is designed to create templated messages as well as messages with rich content. It has a graphical UI in the console, and is powered by a publicly accessible API. You can create a Carousel template, for example, which is great for showing a number of options:

Now, add the Carousel to the message and watch as your RCS message is delivered:

WhatsApp Business Calling

WhatsApp Business Calling is set to reach General Availability on Twilio Voice later this year, unlocking new possibilities for brands to connect with customers on the world's most popular messaging platform. With this launch, businesses can initiate or receive branded voice calls directly through WhatsApp, complementing the rich chat experiences already available. This means users can start a conversation with a simple message and, when it makes sense, move smoothly into a voice call—all within the same WhatsApp interface and without ever leaving the app.

For developers, integrating WhatsApp Business Calling is straightforward through Twilio's familiar APIs. Learn more about WhatsApp Business Calling.

Event-Triggered Journeys

Journeys in Twilio Engage saw a significant upgrade at SIGNAL with the introduction of Event-Triggered Journeys, now in public beta. The focus is on delivering the right context at the right time—turning real-time signals into personalized, automated flows without the need for months of custom development.

Consider a scenario where a user abandons their online shopping cart. With Event-Triggered Journeys, you can capture detailed information about the abandoned items and the user's profile, then trigger a personalized follow-up message through the most effective channel—be it email, SMS, or WhatsApp.

Learn how to set up steps that guide users through a journey based on their real-time actions with Event-Triggered Journeys.

Advancing Platform Trust, Security, and Developer Productivity

Beyond the headline product launches, SIGNAL 2025 also delivered major improvements across compliance, deliverability, and platform security.

• The Compliance Toolkit and Bundles Clone API streamline regulatory workflows and make it easier to reuse approved compliance bundles across organizations.
• The new Deliverability Engine leverages real-time scoring and machine learning to surface and resolve messaging issues before they impact campaigns.
• Fraud Guard continues to deliver significant cost savings by protecting against messaging fraud.
• Twilio Verify added passkey authentication built on FIDO standards for secure authentication, and more granular controls through restricted API keys and access tokens, both now in beta.

On the experience front, Twilio unified its product ecosystem. Developers can now sign up in just one place to access Twilio, SendGrid, and Segment, easily move between them with improved console navigation, and enjoy personalized dashboards and tooling.

🎮 Twilio Arcade Activations That Connected Data + Fun

This year, attendees entered the Twilio Arcade, an immersive, retro-futuristic, data-powered playground fused with Twilio tech. Each activation offered hands-on, gamified, and personalized experiences that showcased the potential of combining Twilio's APIs with real-time data from Segment. Every time someone scanned their badge, a Segment event was triggered to personalize their journey and unlock surprises—from swag and exclusive insights to limited-edition collectibles. Here's a look at some of the key experiences:

Owlvin AI

Owlvin AI invited attendees to build and customize their very own conversational AI agent, all through a cleverly designed arcade machine. Builders could define their agent's personality and behaviors on the spot, then put their creation to the test, interacting live via Twilio Voice or WhatsApp. This activation offered a hands-on showcase of natural language capabilities, large language models, omnichannel messaging, and real-time endpoint customization powered by Twilio's AI Assistants.

Owl Ops

The Owl Ops experience placed attendees at the heart of a retro mission control, where a custom arcade phone connected them to fun, time-bound operations for fictional brands like OwlShoes and OwlMobile. Each phone call was powered by Twilio AI Assistant and Segment's Unified Profile, tracking every success or failure and adapting the journey based on individual results. Builders gained a firsthand look at how unified, real-time data can drive personalized customer journeys and make business workflows truly interactive.

Live Photobooth

The Live Photobooth gave the classic photo booth a modern upgrade. Attendees struck a pose for the camera and were instantly connected with an artist, live over Twilio Video, who captured their likeness as a caricature in real time. As soon as the drawing was finished, participants received a high-quality print—and a digital version instantly delivered via their chosen channel: WhatsApp, SMS, or RCS. This activation demonstrated the power of Twilio's real-time video, omnichannel messaging APIs, and Segment's personalized engagement, making every photo a data-driven experience, not just a souvenir.

Learn more about the Twilio Arcade at SIGNAL 2025.

Building What Comes Next

We even brought a bit of showmanship to SIGNAL with a live magic show powered by Twilio and AI, highlighting how Twilio goes beyond APIs to unlock creativity and new possibilities. The experience centered on building, experimenting, and connecting in ways you might not have thought possible.

And magic was everywhere. As SIGNAL 2025 wrapped, the enduring message for builders was clear: with Twilio, you have the tools to turn ideas into reality.

So, what will you build next? Let's build something great together.