German software giant SAP is acquiring Israeli startup Gigya. According to market sources, the deal price will be $350 million in cash. Gigya develops social platforms for Internet sites. The company is estimated to have an annual turnover in the tens of millions of dollars. SAP is one of the world's largest software houses, and is traded at a market cap of $130 billion.
According to IVC, Gigya has raised $105.8 million to date. Its latest financing round was in 2014 and among its investors are Intel Capital, which led the latest round, Vintage Investment Partners, Benchmark and others.
Gigya was founded in 2006 by Rooly Eliezerov, who is president of the company, Eyal Magen, chief strategy officer, and Eran Kutner, CTO. The CEO is Patrick Salyer. Gigya has 300 employees in Israel, the US and UK including 100 in Tel Aviv.
SAP declined to comment on the report but a source in Germany told "Globes" that an official announcement about the acquisition had been planned for tomorrow but there had been a leak ahead of time to the Israeli media.
SAP already has two development centers in Israel in Ra'anana and Karmiel and 700 employees in Israel.
In a past interview with "Globes", Salyer said, "The days of anonymity on the Internet are over. And that's a good thing. Consumers have made it very clear that personalization is here to stay. To get there, businesses need to understand what consumers want and need, and that begins with identity. The problem is that many approaches to gathering and managing information on customers on the Internet violate users' privacy and are mostly inaccurate or inefficient.
"We designed our user identity platform from the start to manage the complexity of the modern consumer's identity, including dealing with matters such as social, mobile, privacy, and security. Our partnership with Intel will enable us to continue innovating and to make the web more suited to everyone."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 24, 2017
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