Here’s a buzzword bonanza: open source, privacy-safe, AI-driven, voice-based personal assistant Snips has been purchased for $37.5 million by smart-speaker company Sonos. Snips’ conversational software runs on a local device without transferring voice data to the cloud. It can work without an internet connection.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendor Automation Anywhere has raised an impressive $290 million Series B, one year after an even more impressive $550 million Series A. The company makes it easy for non-technical users to create automated processes. They also just launched a Salesforce connector on AppExchange.
Linking customer IDs is just the start to building a unified customer view. Marketers also struggle to connect information across different data stores. Starburst just raised a $22 million Series A for its system, which enables SQL queries against multiple data stores. It’s based the open source Presto distributed query engine.
Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation. The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.