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Yahoo has acquired Summly, a startup that has developed technology to automatically summarize news articles for mobile sites, the company announced this morning.
Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed, and Yahoo notes that it’s expected to close in the second quarter. The Summly team will be joining Yahoo and the existing Summly iPhone app will be shut down. Yahoo’s Adam Cahan, senior vice president of mobile and emerging products, says Summly’s technology will “come to life throughout Yahoo’s mobile experiences soon.”
“Our vision is to simplify how we get information and we are thrilled to continue this mission with Yahoo!’s global scale and expertise,” Summly founder Nick D’Aloisio wrote in a blog post. “After spending some time on campus, I discovered that Yahoo! has an inspirational goal to make people’s daily routines entertaining and meaningful, and mobile will be a central part of that vision. For us, it’s the perfect fit.”
D’Aloisio started programming at just 12 years old, and he founded Summly last fall at 15. It’s not the only news summarization app out there, but Summly packs in a surprising amount of elegant design on top of its news blurb tech. It’s a shame the app is being killed off, but hopefully D’Aloisio and his team can bring some design smarts to Yahoo’s other mobile products.
London-based Summly has raised more than $1.5 million from several investors, including Horizons Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian Chesky, Hosain Rahman, and others.
