US: McDonald’s buys AI-personalization company Dynamic Yield

Dynamic Yield, the artificial intelligence powered personalization platform operator, announced it is being acquired by fast-food chain McDonald’s.

In a blog post, Dynamic Yield Chief Executive Liad Agmon said the company will play a critical role in transforming McDonald’s with digital technology so that it can improve customer service. With Dynamic Yield, McDonald’s will deploy its technology in its outdoor digital drive-thru menu displays as well as other customer touchpoints including self-order kiosks and on McDonald’s app. “When Omri Mendellevich, our CTO, and I started Dynamic Yield seven years ago, the premise of what we were building was based on customer-centric organizations making individualized experiences and personalization a strategic priority,” wrote the CEO in a blog post. “Our acquisition by McDonald’s, one of the most iconic and beloved brands of our time, is truly an endorsement of that vision as they have chosen Dynamic Yield to help power personalization across their 37,000 restaurants in 120+ markets around the world.”

Since launching, Agmon said Dynamic Yield now enables more than 300 brands in six continents including in retail, gaming, finance, travel, and publishing. Its technology helps companies build customer profiles, launch and optimize personalization campaigns and automate decision making for customers.  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.  “This announcement is a major milestone in Dynamic Yield’s history, representing a unique opportunity for us to develop at a higher scale of innovation and break the boundaries of what was originally thought possible,” the executive noted in the blog post.

For some time, McDonald’s has been embarking on a digital transformation aimed at boosting sales and modernizing stores. The efforts appear to be paying off. Last year McDonald’s was able to beat Wall Street estimates in part because of kiosks which are located in more than 15,000 of the stores around the world. Kiosks provide customers with another way to order and boost sales. One recent study found consumers spend more when they order via a self-service kiosk.