MercadoLibre, Inc. (literally "free market" in Spanish, and known as Mercado Livre in Portuguese) is an Argentine company headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay, incorporated in the United States that operates online marketplaces dedicated to e-commerce and online auctions, including mercadolibre.com. As of 2016, Mercado Libre had 174.2 million users in Latin America, making it the region's most popular e-commerce site by number of visitors. The company has operations in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela. History Mercado Libre was founded in 1999 in Argentina. Founder and CEO Marcos Galperin established the company while attending Stanford University. He acquired funding from John Muse, co-founder of HM Capital Partners. Mercado Libre received additional funding from JPMorgan Partners, Flatiron Partners, Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, and Banco Santander Central Hispano. In 1999, Mercado Libre was chosen as an Endeavor company. In September 2001, eBay purchased a 19.5% stake in the company. eBay sold its stake in Mercado Libre in 2016, but the companies continue to collaborate to expand eBay sellers into Latin America. eBay opened its first branded store on the Mercado Libre marketplace from Chile in March 2017. The following month, Mercado Libre acquired iBazar Como, the Brazilian subsidiary of eBay's earlier acquisition, iBazar S.A. In 2006, MercadoLibre.com launched new operations in Costa Rica, Panama, and Dominican Republic. In August 2007, Mercado Libre became the first Latin American technology company to be listed on the NASDAQ, under the ticker MELI. Mercado Libre acquired competitor DeRemate's operations in August 2008. Mercado Libre also acquired Classified Media Group (CMG) in 2008. CMG established the Latin American e-commerce portals tucarro.com and tuinmueble.com. In 2011, the company transitioned its platform to open source technology. The transition allowed application programming interface (API) developers to expand the platform's solutions and services. In 2013, Mercado Libre launched the MeLi Commerce Fund, dedicated to investing in technology startups that create software using Mercado Libre's APIs. By August 2016, the fund had invested $1.5 million in 15 companies in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Mercado Libre acquired Portal Inmobiliario, a Chilean classified ad website, in 2014. In 2015, Mercado Libre announced its acquisition of Metroscúbicos.com, the portal of Mexico-based real estate company Grupo Expansión. In 2016, Mercado Libre relocated its Brazilian headquarters to new offices in São Paulo, Brazil. The 17,000 square meter complex, named Melicidade, held a cafeteria, auditorium, gym, beauty