Behav.io, a mobile sensor startup with backing from the Knight Foundation, announced Friday morning that the company has been acquired by Google, where its CEO used to work before starting the company.
The company received a $ 335,000 grant from the Knight Foundation in June 2012 to improve communities by making better use of data collected on mobile phones. At the time, the startup explained its goals and what it would do with that funding:
“Behavio wants to open access to, and help make sense of, the data routinely collected by mobile phones. Their open source Android platform turns phones into smart sensors of people’s real world behaviors and surroundings: how people use their phones, how they communicate with others, and environmental factors like sound, light and motion. As a result, Behavio can understand trends and behavior changes in individuals as well as entire communities, and help them understand and make use of this information.”
The startup’s CEO and co-founder Nadav Aharony was formerly with MIT Media Lab and then a product manager for Android from 2011 to 2012 before he left to start Behav.io in the summer of 2012.
The company noted the acquisition on its website, explaining that it would be shutting down the closed alpha version of its product but maintaining the full open source project:
“We are very excited to announce that the Behavio team is now a part of Google! At Behavio, we have always been passionate about helping people better understand the world around them. We believe that our digital experiences should be better connected with the way we experience the world, and we couldn’t be happier to be able to continue building out our vision within Google.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment but I’ll update this post if they do.
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