Integrated sales and marketing system HubSpot has purchased data synching vendor PieSync. The deal will make it easier for HubSpot to share contact data with its growing partner ecosystem. PieSync doesn’t create a persistent database so the deal doesn’t make HubSpot a CDP – although, as with Salesforce’s purchase of the MuleSoft integration platform, it may be a step in that direction.
Lots of personalization industry news today, Dear Reader. Retail-oriented analytical CDP Manthan and recommendation engine RichRelevance have announced a “path to consolidating” pending regulatory approvals. The firms will start joint sales and marketing right away. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because analytical CDP Amperity bought recommendation engine Custora just yesterday.
You’ve surely heard already that Google’s parent company Alphabet is buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion, and don’t need me to point out that this is about collecting data, not selling wearable devices. So let’s instead report that panel-based customer research company UserTesting has acquired fabulously-named Truthlab, which uses AI to find highlights in video feeds. As with Fitbit, the goal is to extract useful information from people’s behaviors. It’s Zuboffian!
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.