AOL acquires and shuts down predictive-analytics startup Velos

AOL has acquired a predictive analytics startup called Velos for an undisclosed sum and has shut down the startup’s service, which enabled companies to connect data sets, clean up data, and run predictive models.

The deal went down in March, according to founder Albert Azout’s LinkedIn profile, but hadn’t been made public until today.

“We are happy to announce that Velos (Sociocast Networks, LLC) is now part of AOL Inc.,” Velos wrote in a note on its homepage. “Our service will no longer be available to the general public. We thank you all for your support.”

Plenty other predictive analytics startups have been acquired in the past few years, including Cognilytics, InsightsOne, and KXEN.

Verizon recently acquired AOL itself for $4.4 billion.

New York-based Velos started in 2010, initially under the name Sociocast Networks. Investors included Raptor Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Bobby Yazdani, Joe Zawadzki, and Doug Imbruce. Customers included Quicken Loans and Cigna Health.

In 2013 the startup pivoted to focus not on individual developers but on less technically savvy business owners. Velos’ service supported the Hadoop open-source file system for storing lots of different kinds of data, as well as the R and Python programming languages.