OJO Labs + WolfNet: "We partnered a Ferrari with fuel"

News reports yesterday disclosed that OJO Labs and WolfNet were becoming one company. The news traveled fast and furious, despite the fact that the "official" news release was issued this morning on the newswire.

How cool is it that one of the hottest artificial intelligence startups just bought an established, 20+ year-old real estate data giant?

Here are some classic quotes from yesterday news coverage of this historic event:

RISMedia

"The largest aggregator of MLS data has been acquired by one of the industry's hottest artificial intelligence companies."

"This is probably the most impressive fundamental move toward assisting the industry in improving the consumer experience. We partnered a Ferrari with the fuel." – Ken Jenny, advisor to the merger

"It's the right communication at the right time with the consumer, and that's really a missing piece right now." – Joel MacIntosh, Founder and CEO, WolfNet

"It enables real estate pros and brokers to provide AI to help consumers in the home-search process. That is the beginning. There is no end." – Ken Jenny, advisor to the merger

Inman News

"These guys (WolfNet) are years ahead of everybody else, so let's put resources into that instead of trying to re-invent it." – David Rubin, OJO Labs co-founder

"We've seen startups come and go, tons of companies flicker in and flicker out, but this is a different deal. What they have and bring to the marketplace is at a different level, a different feature set that will make a fundamental difference in the marketplace. That's what made us so excited about moving forward with this deal." – Joel MacIntosh, Founder and CEO, WolfNet

Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)

"(OJO) empowers the agents and those in their sphere to better serve the consumer." – Ken Jenny

"The OJO AI assistant is in its infancy but is already the most personalized approach to real estate ever created." – Joel MacIntosh, Founder and CEO, WolfNet

"The MLS has the best property data there is, and with WolfNet, the speed and quality of those feeds will be key components of the data powering OJO." – John Berkowitz, CEO of OJO Labs

Vendor Alley

"Joel is definitely an O.G. in the industry." – Greg Robertson

Silicon Hills

"We believe that we have the beginning of one of the largest companies ever to come out of Austin. We're not selling early. We're building something big and world-changing here." – John Berkowitz, CEO of OJO Labs

"The industry is saying wow. It's not every day a small AI startup acquires a giant data provider to create a much bigger company." – John Berkowitz, CEO of OJO Labs

Austin Business Journal

"(T)he merger could potentially make the home-buying process more efficient for real estate companies, brokers and their customers."

"WolfNet will improve OJO's machine learning, according to OJO Labs Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder David Rubin. 'That means OJO will get smarter, faster and, most importantly, the consumer's real estate transaction experience in the future is going to get better.'"

Here is the official news release issued this morning at 8:00 am Central Time.

To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.