For no obvious reason, today brings three investments in collaboration systems. Start with purchase of a majority share in work management platform Wrike by Vista Equity Partners. Vista – or VEP to its friends – has bought quite a few well known martech companies, including Marketo, Xactly, and Cvent.

More turmoil: Alliance Data announced it is seeking “strategic alternatives”, including a sale, for its $2.2 billion Epsilon marketing and data subsidiary. Alliance Data is approaching $8 billion revenue with a market cap of $10.6 billion or 1.3x revenue.

It’s deal-making time for generative AI model builders and publishers who can provide them with quality data.  Germany publishing giant Axel Springer is trading access to its data for Microsoft adtech, AI, and Azure hosting solutions.  Meanwhile, The Financial Times has struck a deal with OpenAI to license its content with attribution of summaries and quotes.