Curbside, a US-based e-commerce platform backed by pharmacy chain CVS Health, mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and media firm O’Reilly Media, was acquired by e-commerce company Rakuten on Friday.
Financial terms of of the transaction have not been disclosed. Curbside will continue to operate independently with staff, services, products and partners all remaining as they are.
Curbside operates an e-commerce platform that enables brick-and-mortar stores to easily set up online shops, manage and fulfil orders and integrate their shop in third-party services such as local discovery and review platform Yelp.
The company expects to use Rakuten’s resources to accelerate the development of its platform, expand internationally and enable retailers to tap into Rakuten’s ecosystem.
CVS Health previously invested an undisclosed sum in Curbside in 2016. Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of Qualcomm, participated in a $25m series B round in 2015 led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with support from Index Ventures and AME Cloud Ventures.
Curbside had secured $8m in a series A round in 2014 led by Index and backed by O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of O’Reilly Media, as well as AME, Innnovation Endeavors, Chicago Ventures, TenOneTen and WGI Group.
The series A investors had previously supplied $1.5m in seed funding in 2013.