New York, NY – January 25, 2021 – Taboola, has entered into a definitive merger agreement with ION Acquisition Corp. 1 Ltd. (NYSE: IACA) under a special purpose acquisition company.
The merger makes Taboola valuation approx $2.6 billion and Taboola expects to have $600 million of cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet at closing. Prior to this merger Taboola raises $160 million and had approximately $240 million of cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet.
After the acquisition, Taboola name and will trade on the NYSE under the new symbol “TBLA”. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 of 2021.
Founded in 2007 by Adam Singolda, Taboola enables digital property owners to harness the value of AI-driven recommendations and offers advertisers a way to effectively access users in the open web.
Taboola surfaces recommended articles across 9000 popular content websites including publishers like CNBC, NBC News, Business Insider etc. enabling advertisers to be recommended side-by-side with editorial content, driving significant value.
Taboola estimates the highly fragmented advertising market in the open web to be approximately $64 billion in 2020. It promotes more than 13,000 advertisers, reaching 516 million daily active users.
Taboola’s recommendation platform renders editorial and paid recommendations natively, creating meaningful value to its digital property partners, advertisers and users. As a result, the company believes it has a significant market opportunity.
“Taboola is embarking on an exciting new journey as a public company, a milestone only made possible by years of trusted partnerships with tens of thousands of digital properties and advertisers who I want to personally thank for believing in Taboola and me for years,” said Adam Singolda, Founder and CEO at Taboola.
In 2021 Taboola plans to invest more than $100 million in R&D growth initiatives including AI, eCommerce, TV, and device manufacturers.
In 2020 Taboola achieved $1.2 billion in Revenues, approximately $34 million of Operating Income.