When Oracle bought consumer data collection vendor AddThis in January 2016, GDPR was barely a cloud on the horizon and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytics deal was still a well-kept secret. Times have changed and Oracle’s once-grand consumer data ambitions have shriveled. Oracle pulled AddThis from Europe in 2019 and will discontinue all remaining AddThis services starting tomorrow.
Platforms like Snowflake keep expanding their features, but there are still plenty of independent vendors offering data-related tools. Elementl is one of those; they offer Dagster, a “fundamental reinvention of data orchestration” based on “unique abstractions and asset-first approach”. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know they just raised a $33 million Series B, raising total funding to $48.8 million.
Italy’s Garante, which has been an aggresive proponent of AI regulation among EU regulators, announced it will increase scrutiny of generative and machine learning AI applications. This follows its recent success in getting ChatGPT maker OpenAI to make changes to its ChatGPT to bring it into GDPR compliance.
CX management platform Sprinklr is introducing “digital twins.” Not your average chatbot, a Sprinklr digital twin is more like an AI-powered employee, able to plan actions, create workflows and make decisions, but at speed and at scale. They are said to be more easily trained than chatbots and can operate within brand policies and guardrails.