Today’s newsletter is brought to you by the letter V. We’ll start with VTEX, an integrated commerce platform that just raised $140 million in what’s apparently its first investment round. The 20-year-old vendor supports more than 2,500 online stores in 28 countries. It’s a helpful reminder that not every major system is owned by one of the giant software vendors.

Chatbot vendor Intercom found that sales bots now outnumber customer service bots, a switch from earlier days when service bots were more common. Both types of bots speed response and save money but 87% of consumers still prefer humans for quick interactions. Fun fact: there are more than 2,000 chatbot vendors.

It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.