CNN announced today that it has acquired the assets and hired the development team of Canopy, a Brooklyn and Boston based private personalization architecture company. The move will accelerate CNN’s development of “NewsCo” – the project name for its forthcoming news and information platform connecting users to trusted sources, storytellers and creators across a wide range of topics. The effort is the first from CNN’s recently formed team of strategists and technologists whose exclusive focus is the creation of new products and platforms to address ever-evolving user needs and drive future growth for the business.
“This acquisition enables us to light up in a single transaction a proven, best-in-class team whose deep knowledge and skillsets would’ve taken many months or even years to assemble,” said CNN EVP & Chief Digital Officer Andrew Morse. “Canopy’s culture of fast-cycle, iterative software, and product development will enable us to more rapidly realize our ambitions and deliver against our goals.
Canopy is led by Founder/CEO Brian Whitman and is made up of a team of 15 proven experts with backgrounds at Spotify, Instagram, Google, Twitter, Flipboard and more who have built much of the personalization layers of the internet that are still in use today. Canopy launched in 2018 and built a private, explainable and controllable architecture to give people the power of discovery while keeping their data secure. Canopy combines human curation, on-device machine learning, and differential privacy to ensure the best discovery experiences while protecting personal data on users’ devices.
“There has never been a more crucial time to help people discover trusted sources around topics and issues that matter most to them,” said Whitman. “We’re incredibly excited to join the team at CNN to build some amazing products for their millions of global users.”
