eBay has announced its acquisition of Corrigon, a Tel Aviv-based pioneer of visual search technologies. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed but reports put the purchase at under $30 million.
Corrigon has created image recognition software that helps identify objects within an image. The e-commerce giant is going to use this technology to match images to products.
“Corrigon’s expertise and technology will help match the best images to their products so that shoppers can be confident that what they buy is exactly what they see. Corrigon is the third acquisition in 2016 to further bolster eBay’s structured data efforts, following the acquisitions of Netanya-based predictive analytics startup SalesPredict and Expertmaker,” the company announced in a statement.
Corrigon brings deep experience in image processing and computer vision to eBay.
“As we continue to evolve the eBay shopping experience, Corrigon’s technology and expertise will help buyers find the best results when shopping on eBay through experiences that were not possible a year ago, before our investments in structured data,” said Amit Menipaz, Vice President and General Manager of Structured Data at eBay.
“Corrigon represents eBay’s third acquisition in the structured data space this year, further underscoring our commitment to powering deeper inventory insights for our sellers and compelling new user experiences for our buyers.”
“Corrigon’s state-of-the art visual search technology enables fine grained product detection within images. We look forward to applying our expertise and technology to eBay’s platform, which has more than a billion product images,” said Avinoam Omer, co-founder and CEO of Corrigon. “Working in partnership with eBay’s structured data team, we will help eBay sellers list more efficiently and eBay buyers find what they are looking for faster in order to increase customer sales conversions.”
Upon the close of the transaction, the Corrigon team will join eBay’s structured data organization and will be based in eBay’s Israeli Development Center in Netanya.
Corrigon was co-founded in 2009 by Avinoam Omer and Einav Itamar. Prior to Corrigon, Omer founded Zoomix (acquired by Microsoft), which developed machine learning technology for data quality and master data management and, before that, DataChase.