Conversational analytics is another growing space. The latest news there is that contact center AI vendor Observe.AI bought ScopeAI, which automatically extracts insights from chat, email, and social conversations. Related items we’ve already reported include: ZenDesk’s purchase of Cleverly, Level AI’s launch with $15 million funding, Involve.AI’s $16 million Series A, and Verint’s purchase of Conversocial.
Headless commerce makes it easier to deploy custom ecommerce front-ends by providing the underlying processing technology. It’s an important trend but there’s too much happening to cover in depth. So here are some headlines to give you a flavor: Shopistry has integrated with the Square payments platform and joined its App Marketplace. Fast Simon has expanded its Shopify integration with a new shopping optimization tools. OneView Commerce has made its transaction engine available on Microsoft Azure. You get the idea.
Messaging platforms are also hot, although I have just one item today: Netherlands-based Trengo has raised a $36 million Series A. Trengo combines customer and employee communications across multiple messaging channels, so it also plays in the equally-hot collaboration platform space.
Lytics has launched Cloud Connect, which lets users create SQL queries to extract an audience from a cloud database and send it to an ad network. They describe it as a “freemium” product but don’t get too excited: the free version connects just one warehouse to one ad network.