Pinterest Tacks On Staff -- WSJ

By Yoree Koh 

Pinterest Inc. on Wednesday said it acquired the team that built Fleksy Inc., maker of a keyboard app that uses predictive technology to improve typing on touch screens.

The image-discovery site said Fleksy's technology isn't part of the deal, and the app will continue to run for now. Instead, Pinterest said about half of Fleksy's 10-person staff will join the company, including founder and CEO Kosta Eleftheriou.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

San Francisco-based Fleksy raised about $6 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Highland Capital, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.

Founded in 2011, Fleksy started off as an iPhone and iPad app for the blind community to help them type on devices. It later expanded to serve a broader audience for both Apple iOS and Google Android devices, helping users to improve the speed of typing and enabling them to customize their keyboard.

Pinterest said some of the app's accessibility components that aid the blind and visually impaired with be open sourced. Fleksy has been downloaded on more than 12 million devices, Pinterest said.

The predictive technology powering smart keyboard space has been getting crowded with options such as SwiftKey and Swype vying to become the consumer's first choice.

Competition heated up when Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy the company behind SwiftKey for a reported $250 million in February, as ambitions in artificial intelligence have grown among the tech giants.

For Pinterest's part, the company hopes the Fleksy team's mobile-engineering prowess can help it build out a visual search engine it dubs a "catalog of ideas." Mr. Eleftheriou will be joining the product-engineering team.

"Pinterest is intensely focused on refining the mobile experiences that make it possible to flow effortlessly through our catalog of ideas on any device, any place in the world," said Scott Goodson, Pinterest's head of core experience. "The Fleksy team is made up of truly noteworthy engineers and world experts in their areas. These technical artists have a history of developing architecturally innovative, highly optimized software."

Pinterest has made several acquisitions in recent years to acquire talent. Last month, Pinterest acquired half of the staff at URX, a San Francisco mobile advertising service.

Write to Yoree Koh at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 16, 2016 02:48 ET (06:48 GMT)

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