It has been confirmed that Hunch has been acquired by eBay.
The story was first broken earlier today by Michael Arrington who quoted the acquisition price as around $80 million. The startup, which offers a way to discover and share product recommendations, will remain to operate as a standalone site while also being integrated with eBay’s own services.
eBay explains that Hunch’s technology talent will be used “to help eBay expand and grow merchandising and relevance capabilities to further improve the shopping and selling experience for eBay customers. For example, eBay buyers are expected to benefit from Hunch’s predictive ability to generate meaningful, yet often non-obvious, recommendations for items available on eBay based on their specific tastes.”
Hunch adds in its own blog post, “We’ll be tackling all kinds of interesting challenges as part of eBay including predictive merchandising, interpreting unstructured data and creating merchant insights.”
Hunch was founded in 2007 by Chris Dixon and Flickr-co-founder Caterina Fake. The reported acquisition price hasn’t been confirmed by either eBay or the startup.
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Hunch says that all staff will remain with the company following the acquisition and the team will continue to be based in New York City.
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