E-commerce Search Startup Twiggle Raises $12.5M

April 7, 2016 | Twiggle, a digital commerce search engine powered by data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, has secured $12.5 million. The Series A round for the Israeli startup was led by South African multinational Naspers along with participation from Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures, and Sir Ronald Cohen. Twiggle said in a statement that it intends to use the funds to continue its international expansion and challenge Amazon’s A9 search engine in digital commerce search. Twiggle was founded in 2013 by Dr Amir Kongsberg and Dr Avi Avidor, two former Googlers, and uses AI and machine learning to create better search and product discovery solutions for online commerce. Twiggle previously raised an undisclosed seed round in 2014 while Naspers, the chief investor in this round, has a history of investing in digital commerce such as Flipkart and Tencent.