Deem, a business travel technology company, is acquiring another San Francisco-area company: Olset, a machine learning and artificial intelligence startup that is focused on hotel recommendations.
Five of the six Olset employees, including founder Gadi Bashvitz, will be joining Deem. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
John Rizzo, COO of Deem, tells Tnooz that he did the deal to buy (rather than wait to develop) the technology he wanted for his customers. He also thinks the Olset team's presence will inject a shot of entrepreneurial attitude into his company.
Olset collects data on the preferences travelers have for certain types of hotels and uses that to simplify the hotel choices offered to the traveler on upcoming trips.
Deem provides software for many travel companies. Rizzo says some of his company's constituents — such as the travel manager or buyer, the travel management company, and hotels — will like Olset's technology because it will boost the rate at which employees use company-compliant software to make hotel reservations after booking flights.
One of Deem's largest customers is American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), which uses Deem's software to help book travel on behalf of its corporate clients. Clients like GBT may begin adopting Olset's technology in Deem's tools within about a year's time, Rizzo predicts.
Olset had received funding from Montage Ventures, Plug & Play Tech Center, GVA Capital, XG Ventures, and 500 Startups, among other investors.
The Olset deal is Deem's first acquisition since its $34 million raise earlier this year.