Aviary just announced that it has been acquired by Adobe.
Aviary offers a software development kit to developers who want to add photo-editing capabilities to their apps. Aviary has also created apps of its own, which it says have been downloaded 100 million times, as well as options for advertisers to turn filters and stickers into ads. At the beginning of this year, Aviary announced that the platform had been used to edit 10 billion photos — partners include Yahoo/Flickr, MailChimp and Walgreens.
According to a blog post from CEO Tobias Peggs (who joined Aviary at the end of 2012), there should be no interruption of service to Aviary’s tools. However, the two companies are working on ways to offer integrated versions of Adobe products to Aviary developers, “such as the ability to save creations to Creative Cloud in Adobe file formats, access Photoshop technology, and connect creativity across devices using the Creative SDK.”
Peggs also said that the deal had its origins in Adobe’s acquisition of social portfolio service Behance 18 months ago. Apparently the Behance office is close to Aviary’s, and as Aviary’s team starting talking to Adobe, “It became even more obvious that we should join forces, accelerate combined efforts and better serve even more app developers and even more people wanting to be creative on mobile.”
The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but Peggs confirmed via email that the entire Aviary team will be joining Adobe.
Since its founding in 2007, Aviary raised a total of $19 million in funding, including a recent $2 million debt round. The company’s investors include Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions (which manages the venture investments of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos), Vision Ventures, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito, Thomas Lehrman and Payman Pouladdej.
Update: And here’s a blog post from Scott Belsky, Adobe’s vice president of products-community and head of Behance.