U.S. tech company Snap Inc. has reportedly acquired startup Teleport, a smart photo editor founded by a Ukrainian, for $8 million.
Snap known for its messenger Snapchat struck a deal with Teleport back in February, but managed to finalize it only in November, Ukrainian business publication Liga.net reported on Dec. 10. The U.S. company reportedly paid $8 million for the agreement, taking five of the Teleport’s leading specialists on its staff in America and Britain.
Although none of the companies involved have disclosed any information about the deal directly, Teleport’s founder and CEO Vladislav Urazov confirmed to the Kyiv Post that Snap now employs startup’s best people in its offices in London and Los Angeles and that Snap is using Teleport’s technologies. Urazov, however, refused to give more details.
Apart from dying hair and changing background on photos, the Teleport app can change skin color.
If the valuation of the agreement is true, Urazov has become a millionaire at the age of 20.
According to the Teleport’s LinkedIn profile, the startup’s main office is in Moscow. The startup’s team consisted of people from Ukraine, France, the U.K. and Russia. They developed a mobile application that can change the color of a person’s hair and change the background in a photo. The app uses artificial intelligence that to analyse photos and video technology to change them.
Before the Snap agreement, the team had attracted $1 million from undiclosed investors. The money was spent on the development of the artificial intelligence and the app.
In Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, the app had had more than 1 million downloads just a day after it was released. It then held the download top-spot for over a week. The app, which is still available for downloading, has a seven-day free trial period and then costs $50 a year for a subscription.
Snap has already bought a Ukrainian startup before. In 2015, the company paid $150 million for an Odesa startup — a real-time video image modification app named Looksery — “to enhance the functionality of its platform.”
The Kyiv Post’s technology coverage is sponsored by Ciklum and NIX Solutions. The content is independent of the donors.
