McDonald's spends $300mn on machine learning startup Dynamic Yield

McDonald’s announced this week that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Tel Aviv-based startup Dynamic Yield. At $300mn, the acquisition is the fast food giant’s largest in over 20 years, according to TechCrunch.

Dynamic Yield is a data and machine learning driven, personalized customer experience company. McDonald’s has announced that one of its first deployments of Dynamic Yield’s technology will be in its drive thru order screens. Dynamic Yield’s decision technology will provide a personalized customer experience to customers, by varying outdoor digital menu displays to show food based on time of day, weather, current restaurant traffic and trending menu items. The decision technology can also instantly suggest and display additional items to a customer's order based on their current selections.   

"Technology is a critical element of our Velocity Growth Plan, enhancing the experience for our customers by providing greater convenience on their terms," said Steve Easterbrook, President and Chief Executive Officer, McDonald's Corporation. "With this acquisition, we're expanding both our ability to increase the role technology and data will play in our future and the speed with which we'll be able to implement our vision of creating more personalised experiences for our customers."  

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McDonald's tested this technology in several U.S. restaurants in 2018. Upon closing of the acquisition, McDonald's will begin to roll this technology out in the Drive Thru at restaurants in the United States in 2019 and then expand the use to other top international markets. McDonald's will also begin work to integrate the technology into all of its digital customer experience touchpoints, such as self-order kiosks and McDonald's Global Mobile App.    

Liad Agmon, co-founder and CEO of Dynamic Yield, added: "We started Dynamic Yield seven years ago with the premise that customer-centric brands must make personalization a core activity.  We're thrilled to be joining an iconic global brand such as McDonald's and are excited to innovate in ways that have a real impact on people's daily lives."