Venture funding may not quite be flowing like wine anymore, but the tap isn’t completely shut. Klaus, which uses AI to review customer support conversations so managers don’t have to, just closed a €12 million Series A. Klaus is based in Estonia and has an exceptionally cute cat logo, if you’re tracking either of those dimensions.
In somewhat cheerier news, Spiceworks Ziff Davis reports that most companies (51%) plan to increase IT spending next year, even those even more (83%) are worried about a recession. Unfortunately for many marketers, the focus of spending will be infrastructure improvements not marketing. If you want a clearer sense of IT priorities: personalized advertising ranks second-to-last on a list of ten ways organizations plan to use artificial intelligence.
Coalesce lacks a cute animal mascot but they’re part of the super-hot data preparation space, driven by companies’ need to manage big data efficiently. They just raised a $26 million Series A for a transformation tool that combines the efficiency of a graphical user interface with power of a code-driven system. How exciting is that?
CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising. The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products. Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.