Pinterest confirms 'acqhire' of mobile advertising startup URX

Pinterest has hired about 15 people from now-defunct mobile advertising startup URX, including its co-founder and CEO, the company announced today. The move confirms Recode‘s report from last month that Pinterest was in talks to hire staff from the startup, which was struggling to survive. Pinterest is not buying URX technology or other assets in the deal.

URX co-founder and CEO John Milinovich is joining Pinterest as a product manager. Other URX employees are joining Pinterest’s product engineering, product management and partnerships teams. About half of URX’s 30-person staff was let go and will not move over to Pinterest.

URX, which had raised more than $15 million in venture capital, specialized in deep linking, a technology that lets people tap from inside one app to access a specific point inside another app. It faced an uphill battle as big mobile software makers like Google and Apple have pushed their own efforts to make content walled off inside apps more discoverable.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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