Cisco is paying $270 million for Accompany, which uses AI to build profiles of business decision makers and map their connections. They’ll integrate the data with their collaboration products, most notably WebEx. The deal may be more about AI talent than data: Accompany founder Amy Chang, who sat on Cisco’s board until the purchase, will take charge of Cisco’s collaboration business. Total funding for Accompany was $40.6 million.
Here’s a peculiar item: three industry groups have formed an initiative to create “quality label” for marketing data, similar to the nutrition labels on food packages. Participants include the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) and The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), plus 15 big compilers and users of marketing data. The label would disclose source, collection, recency, and “compliance signals” with industry and legal standards. Presumably the underlying motivation is to ease concerns about liability for using data that violates GDPR.
Are you sad this newsletter hasn’t been covering Facebook’s privacy troubles in detail? Then you’re in luck: here’s a detailed look from Raab Associates at items you might have missed and some perspective on what it might all mean. You’re welcome.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.