eBay is acquiring Israeli company SalesPredict, which uses advanced analytics to predict consumer-buying behavior. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but sources estimate that the acquisition was for about $40 million.
The acquisition is eBay's latest move to build up its machine-learning capabilities in order to clean up its vast product catalog. eBay has more than 900 million listings, and SalesPredict will assist the company in deciding why those listings end up at a certain price.
eBay VP and general manager structured data Amit Menipaz said, "For our buyers, it will help us better understand the price differentiating attributes of our products, and, for our sellers, it will help us build out the predictive models that can define the probability of selling a given product, at a given price over time."
The acquisition of SalesPredict follows eBay's announcement in May that it is buying the Swedish machine-learning startup Expertmaker. Once the acquisition is complete, SalesPredict CEO Yaron Zakai-Or will serve as a director of product management, technology. SalesPredict CTO Kira Radinsky will be director of data science and chief scientist for eBay Israel.
SalesPredict was founded in 2012 by Zakai-Or and Radinsky and is based in Netanya. The company's employees will now join eBay Israel's offices, which are also in Netanya.
Zakai-Or said, "With more than 900 million items listed at eBay, we have a huge opportunity to use our experience in machine learning and predictive analytics to help identify the characteristics of products that are important in influencing their price."
eBay has a substantial presence in Israel through a string of acquisitions here either directly or through its PayPal unit. This is eBay's fifth acquisition in Israel. In 2005, it bought Shopping.com for $620 million, in 2008 it bought Fraud Sciences for $169 million through PayPal, in 2011 it bought The Gifts project for $30 million and last year PayPal bought Beersheva based CySense for $60 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 12, 2016
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