July 12, 2016

eBay has announced its buyout of SalesPredict, the Netanya-based company known for its predictive analytics and machine learning. Financial details were not publicized but media reports say the deal is worth between $20 million and $30 million.

“SalesPredict’s deep expertise in predictive analytics and machine learning will contribute to eBay’s structured data efforts.  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,” said Amit Menipaz, Vice President and General Manager of Structured Data at eBay.

The acquisition of SalesPredict, a company co-founded in 2012 by Yaron Zakai-Or and Kira Radinsky, is meant to support eBay’s artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science efforts to support its structured data plan.

“With more than 900 million listings on eBay, there is an enormous opportunity to extend our experience in machine learning and predictive analytics to help eBay identify important product attributes that can affect the price of a product,” said Zakai-Or.  “In partnership with eBay’s broader structured data team, we will help arm eBay sellers with more information about the value of items, ultimately helping to increase customer sales conversions.”

“As a data scientist at heart, I’ve always been interested in exploring the myriad ways we can leverage data to predict future high impact events,” said Kira Radinsky. “In founding SalesPredict, our vision was to bring about a major change in how business is conducted by unifying micro- and macro-economic predictions.  Today, this vision has yielded state-of-the-art automated data science capabilities. I am excited to have the opportunity to bring these capabilities to eBay’s community and ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, another multi-million dollar exit in the Israeli high-tech arena saw Brazilian micro-credit giant Avante scoop up Israeli fintech startup Sling. Again, financial terms were not officially disclosed but reports say the deal is worth $10 million.

Sling was founded in 2014 by CEO Erez Yerushalmi and COO Jacob Cohen. Sling allows micro merchants – street vendors, therapists, etc — accept mobile payments from any consumer with a smartphone in their proximity.

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