Finally, funding. Apollo.io just raised a $32 million Series B for its prospecting data system, which has collected 220 million business contacts by scanning the web and collecting data from freemium clients. And Merge announced a $15 million Series A for its B2B data integration platform. Merge handles all types of data, not just customer information.
Meanwhile, Demandbase just announced it will help expand the B2B capabilities of Microsoft’s CDP, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. Microsoft clients will be able to read data from Demandbase, InsideView, and DemandMatrix (all owned by Demandbase) and execute campaigns through Demandbase delivery tools. Unless you have the memory of a gnat, you’ll recall that Microsoft just announced its CDP will join other Microsoft products in a Customer Experience Platform.
Treasure Data has secured $234 million in funding, mostly from parent company Softbank. So far as we know, it’s the largest CDP round ever. You may recall that Treasure Data was purchased by Softbank-owned Arm in 2016 and became independent again earlier this year, with Softbank retaining a major ownership position.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.