CDP Institute

Next up: Point Pickup Technologies has purchased white label ecommerce platform GrocerKey. This highlights the trend of retailers taking control over last-mile delivery systems, rather than relying on United Parcel Service, Amazon, Uber, Instacart, or others. You’ll recall that WalMart opened its own delivery services to other retailers just last week.

Walmart doing stuff is apparently a trend in itself, but so far they seem to have missed the “data observability” market. We do have a $200 million Series C for data observability vendor Cribl. Just last week, Cribl competitor Monte Carlo raised a $60 million Series C of its own.

Apple has announced an agreement to settle a class action suit by U.S. developers that attacks its App Store policies. Critics were not impressed, since the deal preserves Apple’s requirement that payments be made through the App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut. The agreement is subject to court approval.

If you’re challenged by tracking 8,000 martech solutions, how would you feel about ten million? That’s how many technologies Iterate.ai has just announced it now covers, up from nine million a few months back. The company uses an AI engine to spot trends and grade start-up companies. They also offer a low-code platform with 465 pre-built modules that lets users assemble their own apps. Interesting.

Sastrify covers a mere 20,000+ solutions in its SaaS procurement platform. They offer a range of services to help small and mid-size companies catalog, track, select, buy, and monitor SaaS systems. Their news today is a $7 million seed round.

Customer Data Platforms are the highest technology investment priority for traditional retail marketers, listed in the top 3 by 78% in this CommerceNext survey for Yotpo.  Digital-first retailers, who struggle less with tech in general, rated attribution, messaging, and new ecommerce models ahead of CDP.  The survey also covers business goals, privacy compliance, and other non-CDP topics if you have other interests.