McDonald’s was reticent to share any specific insights gleaned so far, or numbers around the personalization engine’s effect on sales. “It’s drawing the insight and the intelligence out of it.” “We’ve never had an issue in this business with a lack of data,” says Easterbrook. For that, you have to head to the drive-thru. But that still doesn’t address the bigger question of why. The burger giant can certainly afford it in 2018 alone it tallied nearly $6 billion of net income, and ended the year with a free cash flow of $4.2 billion. That would make it the company's largest purchase since it acquired Boston Market in 1999. Dynamic Yield reportedly had been recently valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars people familiar with the details of the McDonald’s offer put it at over $300 million. When you add an item to an online shopping cart, it’s the tech that nudges you about what other customers bought as well. McDonald’s is set to announce that it has reached an agreement to acquire Dynamic Yield, a startup based in Tel Aviv that provides retailers with algorithmically driven 'decision logic' technology.
But that could soon change: The fast-food giant has embraced machine learning, in a fittingly super-sized way. Mention McDonald’s to someone today, and they're more likely to think about Big Mac than Big Data.
