Facebook acquires Indian-founded Chai Labs
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 17 August 2010, 18:14 IST
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Bangalore: According to several sources, Facebook has acquired Chai Labs, a content-focused start-up, in a relatively small acquisition. The deal, although not confirmed, is likely to be around $10 million and directed at acquiring talent, reports Kara Swisher from All Things D. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Chai Labs, which was founded by former product manager and launch engineer for Google AdSense, Gokul Rajaram, raised $1.1 million in funding last year, according to a regulatory filing, and $1.3 million before that. On its Web site, Chai Labs says that advisers to the company include prominent Silicon Valley players, such as Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman and Joe Kraus, who appear to be angel investors. Chai Labs makes a content management system for publishers in the travel, local, shopping and entertainment verticals to help them algorithmically create interesting content. Its customers include NBC Local, Associated Content (now owned by Yahoo), and the Travel Ad Network. Chai Labs describes itself as a "technology platform [that] enables publishers to easily customize and launch scalable, search-friendly sites in several verticals. We seamlessly complement our partners' editorial teams, and some of our most compelling implementations have occurred when editors and journalists have worked side-by-side with our platform." The ability to help publishers create, store and deliver content is something that makes sense for Facebook, given the powerful social-networking site has been trying to work with media companies rather than compete with them. Facebook declined to comment and Chai Labs has not responded to an email query.