Booking.com Will Open AI Center In Tel Aviv

October 23, 2017 | Travel e-commerce giant Booking.com plans to open an innovation center in Tel Aviv. CEO Gillian Tans announced this news in a LinkedIn post on October 18. The innovation center will be dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. There is no word on when the center will be established, but the company is currently recruiting for three Israel-based jobs including full-stack developer, UX designer and a data scientist in machine learning. Tans said the company chose Tel Aviv because the city is “one of the most tech-forward markets in the world.” Booking.com already announced it bought Tel Aviv’s Evature, a startup developing natural language and chatbot technology for the travel industry. The sum of the purchase was not disclosed. Amsterdam-based travel site Booking.com was founded in 1996 and bought by The Priceline Group in 2005. It receives 1.5 million night reservations a day.