Groupon is getting a little bigger as it acquires Adku, although it is unclear as to how the new purchase will affect the Chicago-based daily deal giant.
Adku launched with some lofty goals (including “improve the world”), but primarily the point was “to create a solution that required large computing resources” for addressing “real-time analysis of the vast data that’s being created every second on the web and building a machine learning prediction engine to optimize eCommerce.”
Founded by a group of former Google employees in San Francisco, Adku used basically big data for the personalization of online shopping experiences. Thus, this might be what Adku’s resources might be used for at Groupon.
CEO and co-founder Ajit Varma announced the news on the official Adku blog on Monday afternoon, explaining that Adku “started talking to Groupon to bring our technology to more customers and quickly realized that we wanted to be a deeper part of a company that people love and is empowering merchants and customers in a way that’s never been done before.”
After opening more than a year and a half ago, the startup already had considerable momentum with venture capital backing from Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures and True Ventures.
Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. TechCrunch reports that the deal might be worth more than $10 million as a “team + technology play.”
Groupon also recently purchased Mertado, a members-only access site with exclusive deals on home-related products and a social commerce community.
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