Google isn’t the only company making cash acquisitions to compete in the next round of the Web 2.0 battle. Facebook just made another acquisition.
According to D: All Things Digital, the social-networking giant scooped up Chai Labs for about $10 million in what appears to be a talent acquisition more than a technology acquisition. But Facebook could leverage both as it positions against a possible Google social-media attack.
Neither Facebook nor Chai Labs was immediately available for comment, but analysts are already seeing the potential of the deal.
“Facebook has at least two recent acquisitions for talent. It’s probably a little unsettling for Google to have so many former employees now at Facebook, including ‘the Godfather of AdSense,'” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. “But it remains to be seen what will specifically come out of these several acquisitions from product or revenue standpoints.”
Acquiring Tech Talent
By the Godfather of AdSense, Sterling is referring to former Google AdSense executive Gokul Rajaram. Rajaram founded the Mountain View, Calif.-based Chai Labs and raised $1.1 million in funding last year alone. Rajaram has raised a total of $2.4 million for the company. Investors include Marc Andreessen, Joe Kraus, and Reid Hoffman.
Kraus is a general partner at Google Ventures. Hoffman is the chairman of LinkedIn and Andreessen the cofounder of Netscape who launched his own venture-capital firm last year. All three men are members of Chai’s advisory board.
But Facebook isn’t just acquiring Rajaram. Chai Labs also employs veterans from top Silicon Valley companies like Sun and Cisco, along with technical talent from universities like MIT, Stanford and Berkeley.
The team has collectively grown billion-dollar businesses, built soccer-playing robots, represented the U.S. at the Mathematics Olympiads, and won gold medals at ACM International Collegiate Programming Contests.
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