Customer identity data vendor Infutor has purchased Ruf Strategic Solutions, which provides customer segment data and marketing automation. The deal caps two years of strong growth at Infutor, following a strategic investment by Norwest Venture Partners. Looks like third party data isn’t dead.
So far this week, you haven’t been interested in funding or acquisitions, Dear Reader. Let’s try a nice bankruptcy: Catalina, best known for supermarket cash register coupons, filed for Chapter 11 yesterday to erase $1.6 billion of its $1.9 billion debt. The pre-packaged restructuring will let the company focus on digital media and selling its vast trove of consumer data. Catalina is owned by private equity firms Berkshire Partners LLC and Hellman & Friedman LLC.
Finally, we have the headline “Forge.AI Raises $11M to Decode the World’s Unstructured Data” which delightfully suggests a tiny investment could achieve a huge task. Forge.AI uses natural language processing to extract structured information fro data such as news reports, social posts, and financial filings. Not exactly a new idea – which makes their claim even more charming.
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.