Nike Acquires Data Science Company Celect

Nike has acquired Celect, a leading retail predictive analytics and demand sensing firm based in Boston. Celect is Nike’s latest acquisition fueling its consumer direct offense strategy, serving consumers personally at a global scale.

 “With the acquisition of Celect, Nike greatly accelerates our digital advantage by adding a platform developed by world-class data scientists.” said Eric Sprunk, COO, Nike. “As demand for our product grows, we must be insight-driven, data optimized and hyper-focused on consumer behavior. This is how we serve consumers more personally at scale.”

Celect, founded in 2013, has an intellectual property portfolio across data science and software engineering. Its cloud-based analytics platform provides proprietary insights that allow retailers to optimize inventory across an omnichannel environment through hyper-local demand predictions.

Celect’s team will immediately be integrated into Nike’s global operations team and its co-founders will continue as tenured professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consulting Nike on an ongoing basis.

“We’re thrilled to be joining the Nike team, adding our unique and innovative capabilities to the data and analytics foundation they’ve been building over the years,” said John Andrews, Celect CEO.