PayPal Holdings agreed on January 22, 2026 to acquire Cymbio, a Tel Aviv-based company whose software connects brands with retailers, online marketplaces and AI shopping assistants. PayPal later said the acquisition was completed on February 5, 2026.
Terms were not disclosed. Israeli business newspaper Globes reported that market sources estimated the price at $150 million to $200 million, while Calcalist put it in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cymbio's team and technology will power Store Sync, one of PayPal's agentic commerce services. PayPal said merchants using the service remain the merchant of record and keep their customer relationships and control of their brand.
What Cymbio built
Cymbio was founded in 2015 by Roy Avidor, Mor Lavi and Gilad Zirkel. It started in dropship automation, which lets a retailer sell products that ship directly from the brand or a wholesaler rather than from the retailer's own warehouse. Its platform automates the links between brands and retailers, covering product data, inventory synchronisation, order routing and billing.
The company has worked with brands including Abercrombie & Fitch, New Balance, Steve Madden, Billabong and Lacoste. In 2021 it said it supported more than 600 retailers, marketplaces and department stores, among them Nordstrom, Kohl's, Macy's and Farfetch. Globes reported that Cymbio had about 80 employees and that, after a difficult period before the Covid pandemic, its revenue had risen steadily.
“Acquiring Cymbio's technology and team will enhance our agentic commerce capabilities and accelerate the expansion to more of our merchants. By making their product catalogs discoverable on AI surfaces, merchants can increase sales while expanding product choice to the millions of consumers shopping on AI platforms today.”
Why PayPal is buying
PayPal has been building tools for agentic commerce, where shoppers find and buy products through AI assistants instead of on retailers' own websites. Store Sync makes a merchant's product data discoverable in AI channels and can send the resulting orders into the merchant's existing fulfilment and order management systems.
PayPal said Abercrombie & Fitch, Fabletics, Ashley Furniture, Newegg and Adorama were already live with Store Sync on Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity, and that support for OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini app and AI Mode was coming soon. Cymbio's technology had been behind the service before the deal, under a partnership between the two companies.
Michelle Gill, PayPal's executive vice president and general manager of small business and financial services, said PayPal had established itself as a commerce partner for merchants that want to sell within the main AI platforms, and that buying Cymbio's technology and team would help it extend these services to more merchants.
The founders and the funding
Cymbio raised $20 million in a Series B round in November 2021, led by Corner Ventures with participation from Udi Angel, Vertex Ventures and Yuval Tal, as well as former Amazon executive Chris North and former Shopify executive Jeff Weiser. In 2022 PayPal Ventures invested in the company, which at the time planned to add financial services for the brands on its platform. Roy Avidor was Cymbio's chief executive at the time.
Reports differ on the total raised. Calcalist said Cymbio had raised more than $35 million, while Globes said it had raised no more than $30 million in its eleven years and named Udi Angel's XT Venture Capital as the largest shareholder. Globes also reported that the company was valued at $97 million in 2021, according to PitchBook.
At the time of the Series B, Cymbio said it would open an office in Europe, expand its US team and add data analytics and low-code integration features. When PayPal Ventures invested the following year, Phil Valka, a senior director at the fund, said multi-channel selling was one of the most effective ways for brands and merchants to reach more consumers and increase sales.
What happens to customers
PayPal did not announce changes to Cymbio's existing brand and retailer integrations. Its stated plan is to use Cymbio's connections to bring more merchants onto AI shopping platforms through Store Sync, while merchants continue to handle fulfilment through their current systems.
The acquisition gives PayPal direct ownership of a piece of infrastructure it had previously relied on a partner for, as payment companies compete to handle checkout inside AI assistants.
