Taboola has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gravity R&D, a personalization technology company founded in data science. As part of the pending acquisition, Taboola will create and invest in a new research and development hub in Gravity R&D’s headquarters in Hungary. The acquisition is part of Taboola’s stated goal of investing $100m annually into R&D.

Gravity R&D’s core offering, Yusp, is used by retail, eCommerce, and digital media firms to provide personalized offers to customers to drive sales, increase average order sizes, build customer loyalty and create more positive user experiences. Yusp’s technology is built on proprietary algorithms that focus on deep learning for personalization, coupling contextual data and brands’ first party data to make recommendations for shoppers.

Gravity R&D was founded in 2007 by experts in deep learning and data science. Its founders, who are still part of Gravity R&D today, had tied for first place for the Netflix Prize, a public competition to find a team to improve Netflix’s recommendation technology. Gravity R&D has customers in more than 20 countries and currently powers more than 35bn recommendations each month for companies including N11, Kaunet, GoShop, La Vanguardia, and Deutsche Telekom Hungary.

“Our investments in technology, both in team and products behind it, are what continue to give Taboola a strategic advantage,” said Adam Singolda, Taboola Founder and CEO. “Welcoming the Gravity R&D to our family means Taboola grows its ability to make more sophisticated recommendations and do more in areas like dynamic creative optimization and personalization, to drive better outcomes for advertisers – especially those in retail and eCommerce. With a highly skilled team that has spent years perfecting this technology, there was no company better suited  

The private transaction, terms of which are not being disclosed, is subject to customary conditions and expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.