Taboola, the world’s largest discovery platform, will open a big data center at the Advanced Technologies Park (ATP) adjacent to BGU in 2017, the company announced this week. They expect to have 20 employees working at the new center by the end of 2017.
Taboola CEO and Co-Founder Adam Singolda said the company was very interested in getting a foothold in Beer-Sheva in the early stages of the burgeoning hi-tech ecosystem. He also cited BGU’s stellar engineering talent and the move of the IDF’s elite technology and intelligence units to the Negev as additional incentives.
Taboola delivers personalized recommendations to over one billion users every month, on many of the web’s most innovative and highly-visited websites. In 2016, it signed agreements with MSN and AOL. It currently has 550 employees and is looking to grow to 800 in 2017, Singolda said. Taboola has major centers in Tel Aviv and New York and offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Bangkok. The company has a valuation of around $1b.
Taboola’s move is a significant step for the ATP, of which BGU is a partner, as it signals that Beer-Sheva is of interest to highly successful tech companies in other fields in addition to cyber security.
More than 1,500 hi-tech employees work at the two completed buildings of the ATP. Two more buildings are under construction out of a planned dozen or more. The first building opened in 2013 and the second at the beginning of 2016.
The hi-tech park is a unique public-private partnership between BGU, the Beer-Sheva municipality, KUD International and Gav Yam. It is a forward-looking step by the University and its partners to encourage innovative collaborations and retain top quality talent in the South. While many students fall in love with Beer-Sheva and the South during their studies at BGU, they had been forced, for the most part, to find employment elsewhere.
That is changing rapidly thanks to the ATP and the companies who have opened centers of excellence there, such as: Deutsche Telekom, Dell-EMC, Leidos, Paypal, Dalet, AudioCodes, Oracle, Ness, Wix, IBM and many more. WeWork has opened a site in the second building as well, while several accelerators and incubators also offer their services from the ATP.
