Home industry retail facebook acquires GrokStyle, an AI and a visual search company

Facebook acquires GrokStyle, an AI and a visual search company

Retail

CIO Bulletin
2019-02-09

GrokStyle, a startup founded in 2016 is a state-of-the-art AI and visual search engine that lets you look for stuff you’d like to buy by simply taking a picture of it. Facebook has just picked up the startup at an undisclosed sum.

In a statement, Facebook spokeswoman Vanessa Chan said “We are excited to welcome GrokStyle to Facebook. Their team and technology will contribute to our AI capabilities.” The acquisition is a crucial one, as the top-tier companies are stepping up their bids to onboard the best of the AI people. Last year, Facebook bought Bloomsbury AI, an AI company based in London to boost its AI chops.

GrokStyle on its website wrote: “Today, we are excited to share that we are moving on as a team. Our team and technology will live on, and we will continue using our AI to build great visual search experiences for retail. As part of this next chapter, we are winding down our business.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the internet giant uses GrokStyle’s expertise with AI to enhance its own capabilities. GrokStyle was found with a vision of wanting to transform retail through visual search, whether Facebook chooses to work on this will make for an interesting watch in the coming times.