Twilio announced a 17% layoff yesterday, just five months after an 11% reduction. The company is reorganizing into two divisions, once focused on communications products and the other on data and applications, including the Segment CDP. Staff cuts will fall more heavily on the communications group.
Acquia is adding several enhancements to its CDP offering. Most notable from a product perspective are industry-specific configurations and machine learning models for retail, consumer goods, food and beverage, healthcare, financial services, and travel and hospitality. Other changes include new pricing tiers, a new partner model, and technical improvements for scalability, extensibility, and configurability.
Not every tech vendor is cutting back. Customer experience automation platform, which tripled its headcount in the past twelve months, will fuel continued expansion with a $50 million Series C. Ushur lets users create visual workflows for conversational interactions such as claims processing and appointment setting.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.