eBay Buys Another Machine-Learning Company

In an effort to further boost its artificial intelligence platform, eBay announced last week plans to buy Corrigon Ltd., a visual search technology company.

Although the purchase price was not disclosed, it marks eBay’s third acquisition of an artificial intelligence-related company in 2016, according to Internet Retailer.

Through its platform, Corrigon can identify objects in an image and match them to visual and text-based elements, thus making it easier for a company like eBay to match products it sells on its marketplace with images.

“With more than 1 billion live listings on eBay’s platform, 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,” eBay said in a statement announcing the acquisition.

Besides Corrigon, eBay has also acquired two other companies this year that deal with artificial intelligence and machine learning. May saw the acquisition of Swedish-based Expertmaker, which uses AI and machine learning to analyze data. In June, eBay purchased SalesPredict, an Israel-based company that uses analytics to predict customers’ shopping habits.

“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,” Amit Menipaz, vice president and general manager of structured data at eBay, said in a statement.

Corrigon will become part of eBay’s structured data team based in the company’s development center in Netanya, Israel.