Snapchat Acquires An Augmented Reality Startup for $40 Million

A couple weeks ago Snapchat made a very intriguing acquisition that went quite unnoticed (since the news drop landed on Christmas). They bought Israel-based Cimagine for about $40 Million. This is an important purchase because Cimagine created an augmented reality platform that lets consumers instantly visualize products they want to buy. Take a look at the image below that illustrates how it works.

snapchat AR

 

We are speculating that Snapchat will use this new technology to initially enhance their brand partnerships. They can partner up with big ecommerce brands and allow users to visualize the products before buying them. Then, down the road, Snapchat can work in the ability to checkout right through their app, and take an affiliate cut of the order (or at least run AR ads in-app).

This purchase piggybacks off Snap’s recent acquisitions of ad-tech and mobile-related startups like Flite, Vurb, Bitmoji, and others. Stay tuned…

Author

Brandon Doyle

CEO + Founder