Desti: Artificial Intelligence For Travel Planning.

Desti was a start-up that pioneered the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for travel search and planning. It was a spin-off from SRI International founded in 2011.

Desti used artificial intelligence and natural language understanding to create deep knowledge of destinations by reading everything about them – from professional articles to consumer reviews. It then used a conversational user interface to allow users to search specifically for what they want and get the best results immediately.

Desti was acquired by HERE (formerly Nokia Here / Navteq) in 2014 to power Here’s search and places capabilities.

The Main Characters

Nadav Gur – Founder & CEO Nadav founded Desti as a spin-off from SRI International where he was an entrepreneur-in-residence. He is also the founder & CEO of WorldMate (acquired by Carlson Wagonlit Travel). In 2015 he left Here (which was eventually acquired by a consortium including BMW, Audi and Daimler) and has been involved as a founder and advisor in several companies in automotive, AI and mapping. see more ►	Imri Goldberg – Founder & CTO Imri joined Desti as plnnr.com that he founded was rolled into Desti. As CTO he ran all engineering efforts and was behind much of the innovation as well as the rapid delivery of cutting-edge search and user experience features. Post-acquisition he joined Here, which he left in 2015 to join Cymmetria, a security-software company, as founder & CTO. see more ►
Ofer Melnik, PhD – Chief Scientist With a theoretical and applied grounding in Machine Learning, Statistics, Analytics and Natural Language Processing and a post-doc at Rutgers University with a focus on Deep Learning, Ofer brought cutting-edge science skills and was behind AI breakthroughs like Article Search and Review Analysis. Ofer is still leading research teams at Here. see more ►	Mosi Schuchman – Founder & VP Product Design Mosi was the founder & CEO of plnnr.com and joined as an EiR at SRI to start Desti. He was the spirit behind the apps striking visual design and delivered much of the innovation on user experience, now emulated by many hotel booking apps. After Desti he joined Even, a music hardware company. see more ►