Walmart Acquires Analytics Firm Inkiru

It seems like everyone wants to buy a big data analytics firm—even Walmart. The company’s WalmartLabs division has purchased Inkiru, a startup that offers predictive analytics technology.

Pulse 2.0 reported, “Walmart has acquired a predictive intelligence company called Inkiru. The acquisition was made through Walmart’s Silicon Valley innovation incubator @WalmartLabs. Inkiru will be used to accelerate Walmart’s analytics capabilities. The terms of the acquisition was undisclosed.”

TechCrunch’s Leena Rao noted, “Inkiru’s platform is an active learning system that combines predictive intelligence, data analytics and a decision engine to influence and determine customer interactions. Benefits to using Inkiru include being able to reduce fraud, improve customer segmentation and targeting, and more.”

ZDNet’s Liam Tung added, “The big data startup is WalmartLabs’ third acquisition since May, which included platform-as-a-service OneOps, and social startup Tasty Labs.”

GigaOm’s Derrick Harris observed, “All of these new capabilities around social, behavioral and mobile data are likely critical to Walmart as it attempts to keep relevant against Amazon and other e-commerce companies that have digital data in their DNA. Walmart has perfected data analysis and the big-box experience in its brick-and-mortar stores, but mastering the digital experience and even fusing that with the in-store experience takes a new set of skills that it seems determined to acquire.”

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