Facebook has agreed to purchase Onavo, an Israeli data compression developer for mobile applications, Facebook confirmed Monday.

Both companies have not disclosed the sum of the deal. However, according to financial daily the Calcalist the purchase cost more than 100 million U.S. dollars.

"We expect Onavo's data compression technology to play a central role in our mission to connect more people to the internet. Their analytic tools will help us provide better, more efficient mobile products," Facebook confirmed in a statement emailed to reporters.

Under the agreement, Onavo's office would remain in Tel Aviv, a move which will give Israel its first Facebook research and development center.

Founded in 2010, Onavo develops data compression technologies and mobile analytic utilities applications. It uses data from millions of users in order to rate the popularity of other applications. However, Ynet news surmised on Monday that Facebook probably purchased Onavo not because of the company's rating capabilities, but in order to minimize the data consumption of the Facebook mobile application, which is currently slow and heavy.

Onavo is based in Palo Alto, California and employs 40 workers, 30 of whom work in Israel. So far it raised 13 million dollars from Sequoia Capital, Magma Venture Partners, Horizons Ventures and Motorola Mobility Ventures.

This is the third large acquisition by the world's largest social network company in Israel. In 2012 it purchased Face.com, a face recognition company, for 100 million dollars, and in 2011 it purchased Sanptu, a mobile application developer, for 70 million dollars. Endi

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