Second Israeli purchase
Chairman Edo Segal
AOL purchases Israeli start up
Relegence, founded in 1999, develops real-time news engine for financial sector. Deal estimated at tens of millions of dollars
American Internet giant America On Line announced Wednesday that it has acquired Israeli start-up company Relegence Co. of Ramat Gan for an undisclosed amount, but is estimated between USD 50 -90million.
Relegence develops real-time financial services news engine, serving mainly the financial and business markets.
With the purchase, Relegence and its 60 employees will become a subsidiary of AOL, but will continue to function in its current capacity, and will continue to be headquartered in New York, with offices in London and Ramat Gan.
Relegence was founded in 1999, by Eric Kopelman and Edo Segal who serves as current Chairman & CTO. Segal said in reaction to the purchase that "seven years ago we set out on a quest to create the real-time internet to create a world where if a piece of information relevant to you is published - anywhere - it will be on your desktop that second. By joining with AOL, Relegence will be able to execute on this vision. We are incredibly excited to combine our next generation technologies with the scale of AOL. This transaction is a fulfillment of our journey so far, with incredible potential for change and evolution of the Internet phenomenon."
Relegence itself raised an amount of USD 20 million in several rounds. During the seed phase, the investor Micha Angel was involved and the other rounds included mostly foreign venture capital funds such as Knowledge Universe, Pheonix Partners, Broad Band Ventures and Hadson Ventures.
Relegence uses proprietary technology which simultaneously monitors, indexes, and filters more than 20,000 unique, global sources of live content streams and delivers them to a user's desktop which is only relevant to his or her individual search criteria.
This is the second large Israeli start up to be purchased by AOL. In 1998, AOL purchased Mirabilis, which developed the ICQ instant messaging service for USD 407 million. Relegence is AOL's fifth announced acquisition of 2006, following Userplane and GameDaily in August, Lightningcast, Inc. in May, and Truveo, Inc. in January.
