
Snap Inc. liked Snapchat’s recently introduced Cameo feature so much that it bought the company that helped develop it.
Snap confirmed its acquisition of AI Factory Friday, declining to provide any further details, such as terms of the transaction.
The AI Factory website was taken offline at some point and remained in that state Friday.
The company’s LinkedIn page described it as follows: “AI Factory is San Francisco Bay-area company founded in 2018. We provide multiple AI business solutions based on image and video recognition, analysis and processing. AI Factory is a team of young scientists, coding monsters and designers eager to bring artificial intelligence methods to completely new level of daily usage. The company founders had implemented multiple successful startups with great exits.”
Ingrid Lunden of TechCrunch reported that the price tag for the deal was in the range of $166 million, adding that while the company is based in San Francisco, the bulk of its team is based in Ukraine, and it is believed that some of them will relocate while others stay there.
Lunden added that AI Factory founder Victor Shaburov was director of engineering at Snap before leaving in May 2018 to start the company.
Cameo, which debuted Dec. 18, enables Snapchatters to add their faces to popular memes and create short, looping videos.
https://www.adweek.com/digital/snap-inc-scoops-up-startup-ai-factory/