Thanks to an acquisition, Walmart’s online store is getting smarter.
In a post Monday on the official Walmart Labs blog, the company announced the acquisition of Inkiru, a predictive analytics company based in Palo Alto, Calif.
Inkiru is the latest in a series of acquisitions by the big box retailer designed to augment its e-commerce business. According to the blog post, Walmart plans to use Inkiru’s technology to harness the big data streams the company has access to in order to improve a number of key functions including site personalization and fraud protection.
In this case, picking up Inkiru seems to be a clear play to compete with Amazon on predicting what customers will want to purchase next based on their personal history.
Whether or not Inkiru’s tech will make a big enough splash to attract customers to Walmart’s platform remains to be seen.
Previously on GeekWire: Walmart versus Amazon: The next great tech battle?