Uniphore acquires ActionIQ: What the “zero data AI cloud” tells us about CDPs, agentic AI, and the future of enterprise data applications
Last week, Uniphore announced it is acquiring ActionIQ and Infoworks as part of its vision to integrate enterprise data with AI agents to enable better customer support interactions.
This is one of (likely) many enterprise SaaS integration/consolidation plays coming as SaaS undergoes a categorical (in both senses of the word) transformation not seen since the category itself disrupted on-premise software.
In this case, specifically, it looks like Uniphore believes in the power an enterprise CDP like ActionIQ can create by collecting, organizing, structuring and integrating data (across the enterprise) to improve the performance of its AI agents.
What’s also implied for CDPs in this story is where the standalone CDP fits (or doesn’t) in the enterprise data supply chain.
The death of the standalone CDP?
Standalone CDPs are transforming into cloud data connected activation solutions as businesses organize all of their data in cloud data warehouses and invest in compatible applications that connect and interoperate with their data environment.
While this trend of applications connecting to core data infrastructure is not unique to the CDP category, the trend of CEPs (customer experience platforms) and multi-channel marketing hubs building “CDP-light” functionality is also having a narrowing effect on the CDP’s role in the data supply chain.
More simply put, tools are getting better at interoperating with cloud data infrastructure and businesses are bringing more of their data into their cloud data environments. Florian Delval, previously of AIQ, actually had a great take / visual on this just 3 days ago:
Data supply chain consolidation is naturally concurrent with market consolidation: a tale as old as Carnegie Steel.
It’s not unlike how direct to consumer e-commerce killed some legacy retailers and caused others to make strategic or even desperate acquisitions (remember when Walmart paid $3b in cash for Jet.com?).
I’ve written about how cloud data warehouse evolution is at odds with standalone CDP strategies to control your data, how previous attempts by CDPs to become a platform for all customer experience have failed, how standalone CDPs need to be able to create measurable business value, and most recently a warning against focusing on the “ways of doing the job” and not the “jobs to be done.”
Of the standalone enterprise CDPs, I have always had respect for ActionIQ. They amassed an impressive customer roster and delivered an enterprise solution capable of servicing some of the largest and most complex of organizations. They’re smart and have played a role in defining the category.
What I see with this acquisition is an outcome of these trends playing out; in Tasso (their CEO's) words:
“Finally, while I always believed in CDPs as a standalone category, the rise of AI has changed the game. I now believe that the future of CDPs lies within a larger, AI-first platforms (s.p.). Standalone CDPs will struggle to meet the demands of enterprise buyers who seek end-to-end, AI-first solutions.”
I don't fully agree with that last sentence. Every link in the data supply chain will use AI to support various use cases, whether it's insights generation, identity resolution, content personalization, etc. Standalone CDPs need to justify their link in the supply chain and leverage AI to improve it. AI itself can't be the raison d'etre.
Businesses aren't looking for "AI solutions;" they're looking for solutions to a problem or to deliver a business outcome, and every vendor is expected to have an "AI story" at solving that problem more effectively or efficiently.
The “zero data AI cloud”
Notwithstanding the foregoing, and with respect and congratulations to all parties involved, the positioning of this combined entity is a MadLib of industry jargon that feels contradictory to everything that got us to this point…for two reasons:
- Businesses don’t want another cloud. They want to bring purpose-built applications and AI agents to their data. The whole point of the AIQ acquisition is to enable seamless data access across the enterprise, which they define as "a composable data layer." To then call the combination of the data layer, modeling and Al agents a "cloud" connotes another data store just to service customer support interactions, in this case.
- “Zero data” is a perplexing choice of words that seems to contradict the point: to deliver more data to support better outcomes. It's not only focused on the way of doing the job vs. outcome, but it's also a literal contradiction in terms.
I’ll be interested to see what comes of this as it relates to ActionIQ’s customers. The technology play makes sense for Uniphore. It’s unclear how the rest of this shakes out.