McDonald’s buys Israeli Dynamic Yield for over $300m

McDonald’s announced an agreement to acquire the Israeli company Dynamic Yield an aim to create a more customized drive-thru. The Tel Aviv based company develops personalization and decision logic technology. No financial details were published officially, although “Wall Street Journal” and “Techcrunch” both said that McDonald’s is paying over $300 million, its largest acquisition in the past 20 years.

The technology will provide Mcdonald’s customers an advanced personalized experience based on various selections. The outdoor Drive Thru menu will display the food menu based on time, weather, current restaurant traffic, and trending menu items. The device will instantly suggest and display additional items to a customer’s order based on their previous selections. The plan is to start rolling this out across the United States in 2019 and then to move into international markets. The company also plans to integrate this technology into other digital products, like self-serve kiosks and the McDonald’s mobile app.

At the same time, McDonald’s said Dynamic Yield will continue to operate as a standalone company serving existing and future clients, that it will continue to invest in the core personalization technology. Dynamic Yield’s unique personalization technology was born out of the frustration felt by marketers with vendor bloat from point solutions and its detrimental impact on delivering consistent customer experiences. The Founders Lior Agmon and Omri Mendellevich raised a total of $83.3 million from investors including Innovation Endeavors, Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker Capital, as well as strategic backers like Naver (which owns the messaging apps Line and Snow), Baidu, The New York Times and Deutsche Telekom.

“We started Dynamic Yield seven years ago with the premise that customer-centric brands must make personalization a core activity,” said co-founder and CEO Lior Agmon in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be joining an iconic global brand such as McDonald’s and are excited to innovate in ways that have a real impact on people’s daily lives.”