Retail pricing analytics company Engage3 has bought a San Francisco-based company specializing in web data extraction, in a deal that doubles the size of Engage3.
Davis-based Engage3 bought Dexi.io, a company that has developed artificial intelligence-enabled web crawlers that capture data from websites.
“We are stronger together. We were building out our data extraction, and they were adding analytics,” Engage3 CEO Edris Bemanian told the Business Journal, adding that he realized the companies could merge “or we were going to start to compete and start throwing punches at each other."
Engage3 vetted 20 companies to become its data partner and found Dexi.io to be the best, Bemanian said.
The merger doubles Engage3’s employee count to 250, and it gives it new offices in Salt Lake City, Copenhagen, London and Tirana, Albania.
Bemanian declined to disclose terms of the deal.
The acquisition could help leverage Engage3’s "Price Image Management" platform for retailers with AI-enabled web data collection. Engage3’s technology allows retailers to access competitive price intelligence with competitors’ prices at stores and online.
After looking at 20 companies in the web crawler space, Bemanian said Dexi stood out because its AI was able to get more information and get it more accurately and in more nuanced forms than its competitors.
The acquisition also broadens Engage3's customer base beyond retailers because Dexi's customers also include brands, financial services, banks, airlines and travel companies.
Bemanian said that Engage3 and Dexi now serve customers in 182 countries representing over $2 trillion in annual revenue.
Jacob Laurvigen, Dexi CEO and co-founder, gets the title of chief strategy officer at Engage3.
Engage3 supports six of the top 10 retailers in the world and many of the world’s fastest-growing companies, including a quarter of the companies on the Inc. 5000 list.
In December, Engage3 raised $35 million in an equity round led by Marina Del Rey-based Arrowroot Capital, a growth equity firm specializing in business-to-business software-as-a-service companies.
