Snap just snapped up another company, this one in Israel - KTVN Channel 2 - Reno Tahoe Sparks News, Weather, Video

By Lulu Chang

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Snap is starting to snap up companies.

In anticipation of its much buzzed-about initial public offering, rumored to take place sometime next year, it looks as though the hugely popular social media app is making a few strategic purchases of its own. This holiday season, it was reported that Snap Inc. bought Israeli startup Cimagine Media for somewhere between $30 million and $40 million.

As first noted by Calcalist News, this addition to the Snap portfolio will give the social media company a foothold in the Middle East. And of course, Cimagine’s specialties certainly will serve as a boon to Snap and Snapchat as well. The startup focuses on computer vision, real-time image processing, mobile development, and international marketing, among other things, all of which could be useful for Snapchat as it further refines and updates its app.

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Moreover, Cimagine has some experience in ecommerce, or as it calls it, augmented commerce. This could become useful for Snap as it goes public, and looks for other ways to make money.

Snap still has yet to make an official announcement about its latest acquisition, perhaps because of the holiday timing, or perhaps simply because the company tends to be rather tight-lipped about its purchases. All the same, this is the company’s second purchase in just a month, and at least its fourth over the course of 2016 that we know of. Among its other acquisitions are the advertising technology company Flite, the mobile search app Vurb (for which Snapchat paid a reported $110 million), 3D-selfie enabling startup Seene, and bitmoji maker Bitstrips.

As for Snap itself, its IPO could come as soon as March 2017, and the firm is currently valued at somewhere between $20 billion and $25 billion. So keep your eyes peeled when it comes to Snap, friends. It’s pretty clear that something big is brewing.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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