CarGurus has acquired Autolist, an online vehicle marketplace, in a move the Cambridge, Mass., third-party listings site says will help it increase scale.The merger will bring San Francisco-based Autolist into the CarGurus fold, though Autolist will be maintained as a separate website and brand, CarGurus CFO Jason Trevisan said.Autolist will remain headquartered in San Francisco and led by its founder, Corey Lydstone, who will report to Trevisan in the combined company.

Terms of the deal were not released.With the acquisition, CarGurus will expand its customer base to deliver high-quality leads and return on investment to dealerships, Trevisan said.Autolist also brings technology that will allow the two brands to add lenders for financing preapprovals, as well as to expand into digital retailing down the road, he said.

Trevisan told Automotive News the two companies are culturally similar and share similar values around technology and providing a consumer-focused car-buying search.“They are what we think is among the industry’s best mobile app experience, which we can learn from, to be honest,” Trevisan said.“They’ve also made a lot of progress in innovation in consumer finance and digital retailing, and then they are really leaning in on using AI and artificial intelligence in their search algorithms to give the best result to the consumer, which results in a better conversion rate and, again, a very high-quality lead to dealers.” CarGurus allows dealerships to list their inventory for free, though it offers additional listings features for a fee.

It counts more than 40,000 dealerships on its platform.Of them, nearly 29,000 are paying.Dealers who pay to use CarGurus will be able to list their inventory on Autolist, Trevisan said.

“We think this gives the dealers who are still free on our site even more reason to become paying subscribers,” he said.Autolist, which was founded in 2014, has more than 1.3 million unique monthly visitors to its website and another roughly 400,000 unique visitors each month on its mobile app, CarGurus said.“We could not be more excited to join CarGurus, a company that shares our passion for solving big problems and building great products,” Lydstone said in a statement.

“The Autolist journey so far has been incredible, and with CarGurus’ massive scale and category leadership, we believe we’ll be able to accelerate Autolist’s growth while continuing to deliver on our promise of building a better automotive buying experience for everyone.” CarGurus in October said it planned to add companies to its portfolio starting this year that would help it accelerate growth within its core listings business; that sell products adjacent to the listings product, such as dealership technology tools; and get to market faster in emerging business areas, including online peer-to-peer car sales.CarGurus will release its fourth-quarter earnings results Feb.13.