Martech News: Weekly Round-Up 28/07/21

This week in martech: Shutterstock Announces Formation Of Shutterstock.AI, Amperity Raises $100M On A $1B+ Valuation, Zoominfo Drops $575M On Chorus.Ai, Zoom To Acquire Five9, Qualtrics Acquires Usermind, Pantheon Raises $100M, Amperity Raises $100m, Aleph Alpha Raises $27M Series A, Expedition Growth Capital Backs Oktopost, Brandmaker Acquires Allocadia, Starfish ETL And Martin And Associates Partner.

Weekly Round up

Shutterstock Announces Formation Of Shutterstock.AI

Shutterstock, a global creative platform, has announced the launch of Shutterstock.AI, a newly formed subsidiary. Alongside this, the company has acquired three AI platforms; Pattern89, Datasine, and Shotzr.

"With these three acquisitions, Shutterstock.AI will help our customers globally solve the biggest creative challenge they have -- discovering and selecting the right content that is relevant, and that resonates with audiences. We want our customers to create with confidence," said Stan Pavlovsky, Chief Executive Officer at Shutterstock

Amperity Raises $100M On A $1B+ Valuation

Amperity, which provides customer data platforms for its businesses, has raised $100M in funding. This means the start up now has a valuation of over $1 Billion. The series D funding was led by HighSage Ventures, with previous backers Tiger Global Management, Declaration Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Madera Technology Partners also participating.

Zoominfo Drops $575M On Chorus.Ai

ZoomInfo, known for providing information about customers, has announced it intends to acquire conversational sales intelligence tool Chorus.ai for $575M. The company sees an opportunity to bring together different parts of the sales process in a single platform by “combining ZoomInfo’s historic top-of-the-funnel strength with insights driven from the middle of the funnel in the customer conversations that Chorus captures".

Zoom To Acquire Five9

In a move called a "game changer" by analyst Daniel Bartus, Zoom has acquired call centre software company Five9. Zoom hopes that  this acquisition will help enhance the company's presence with customers and allow them to accelerate our long-term growth opportunity.

Qualtrics Acquires Usermind

Qualtrics has acquired Usermind, an experience orchestration platform. Brand Anderson, president of products and services at Qualtrics, has stated that Usermind will strengthen the Qualtrics XM Directory, its human sentiment database with more than 4 billion customer and employee profiles, by bringing in contextual data.

Pantheon Raises $100M

WebOps platform Pantheon has raised $100M, solely funded by the SoftBank Vision Fund. With this round, Pantheon has now reached unicorn status, with a valuation of over $1 billion.

Aleph Alpha Raises $27M Series A

German startup Aleph Alpha has raised a $27M Series A round to build ‘Europe’s OpenAI’. Aleph Alpha has now fundraised a total of €28.3 million

Expedition Growth Capital Backs Oktopost

Business-to-business social media marketing platform Oktopost has secured a $20M investment from London-based growth equity firm Expedition Growth Capital. The company plans to use the capital to advance its product roadmap, focused on B2B need, customer cussess, marketing and sales, and strategic acquisitions. 

Brandmaker Acquires Allocadia

Brandmaker, an marketing ops and marketing resource management software company, has acquired Allocadia, an organisation focusing on marketing planning, budgeting and performance management. The transaction is expected to be completed within the month.

Starfish ETL And Martin And Associates Partner.

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Martech News Weekly round-up - over and out.