The purchase of Corrigon is eBay’s third acquisition in 2016 related to artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science.

EBay Inc. is spending more money to better organize its product data and make items easier for consumers to find. As part of that effort, the online marketplace said last week it will buy Corrigon Ltd., a visual search technology company. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Corrigon can identify objects within an image and match both visual and text-based elements to ensure that an image is recognized, correctly classified and best-matched to a product, eBay says.

“With more than one 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,” eBays says in the release announcing the acquisition.

Corrigon is eBay’s third acquisition in 2016 related to artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science. In May the online marketplace acquired Malmo, Sweden-based Expertmaker, which focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics. In June, eBay said it would buy SalesPredict, an Israel-based company that uses analytics to predict customer buying behavior and sales conversion. Both of those deals have since closed.

Corrigon brings deep experience in image processing and computer vision to eBay, eBay says. Corrigon’s technology will help eBay’s efforts with image recognition, classification and image enhancements as part of its structured data initiative, which aims to characterize items in a standard way. EBay says there are three parts to its structured data initiative: first, collect the data; second, process and enrich the data; and third, create product experiences. Corrigon will support the second and third parts, eBay says.

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“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,” says Amit Menipaz, vice president and general manager of structured data at eBay.

When the deal closes, the Corrigon team will join eBay’s structured data team and will be based in eBay’s development center in Netanya, Israel.

“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,” says Avinoam Omer, co-founder and CEO of Corrigon.

Corrigon was co-founded in 2008 by Omer and Einav Itamar.  Prior to Corrigon, Omer founded Zoomix, which has been acquired by Microsoft. Zoomix developed machine learning technology.

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Earlier this year, eBay reported that 60% of items listed on the marketplace in Q1 2016 conformed to its structured data rules, up from 37% in Q4 2015.

 

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