AI sales agents are getting smarter. The data they rely on? Not always.

People.ai today announced a Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration for its SalesAI Platform, aiming to solve one of revenue AI’s biggest problems: incomplete and inaccurate data. The integration allows revenue teams to connect AI agents—including Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT—directly to People.ai’s Answer Platform, which unifies structured CRM data and the unstructured reality of sales activity.

In plain terms, sales teams can now ask pipeline questions inside the AI tools they already use—and get answers grounded in both CRM records and what’s actually happening in emails, meetings, and calls.

The AI Revenue Problem: Garbage In, Confident Answer Out

Enterprise AI adoption is accelerating. Gartner predicts that 33% of enterprise software will include agentic AI by 2028. Revenue teams are already using AI agents to forecast pipelines, identify risks, and prioritize opportunities.

But there’s a catch.

Research suggests 80% of CRM data is inaccurate. Reps forget to log calls. Opportunity stages lag reality. Buying committees evolve without updates. When AI models analyze that incomplete data, they can produce answers that sound authoritative—but aren’t.

For sales leaders asking high-stakes questions like:

• Where is risk building in my pipeline?

• Which deals are stalling?

• Who actually has buying power?

A wrong answer doesn’t just skew a dashboard. It can cost deals.

People.ai’s new MCP integration is designed to address that foundational flaw by expanding what AI agents can “see.”

What the MCP Integration Actually Does

Through its Answer Platform, People.ai automatically collects and connects:

• Emails

• Meetings

• Chats

• LinkedIn interactions

• Call transcripts

• CRM opportunity data (stage, close date, deal size)

Its patented matching technology links unstructured activity data to the correct CRM accounts, contacts, and opportunities. NLP-based filtering removes sensitive content while preserving business context.

With MCP, that unified data layer can now be accessed directly from external AI tools. Instead of exporting reports or toggling between systems, revenue teams can query their preferred AI assistant and receive responses enriched with full activity intelligence.

This is less about adding another dashboard and more about embedding revenue intelligence into existing AI workflows.

From Activity Capture to Composable AI Infrastructure

Many activity capture tools rely on basic email or domain matching. That approach can create data duplication or incorrect associations—poisoning the AI models downstream.

People.ai is differentiating on data fidelity. Its platform enriches structured CRM records with persona data, buying power insights, and historical win rates. That enables AI agents to evaluate not only who is in the deal—but what they’re actually saying.

Jason Ambrose, CEO of People.ai, framed it succinctly: revenue teams don’t need more dashboards; they need complete answers at decision time.

Andrew Brown, Chief Revenue Officer at Red Hat, tied the announcement to a broader enterprise AI shift. Red Hat is orchestrating a company-wide move toward becoming an AI-enabled enterprise, and Brown highlighted the value of open architecture and MCP in building composable AI infrastructure. According to him, the approach has helped improve win rates by more than 50 percent.

That comment underscores a key trend: enterprises are moving away from siloed AI tools toward interoperable systems where AI agents can reason across unified data layers.

Why Model Context Protocol Matters

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is gaining traction as a way to standardize how AI models access external systems. Rather than simply passing static datasets, MCP enables dynamic exchange of context between tools.

In this case, People.ai’s AI model doesn’t just send raw records to Claude or Copilot. It exchanges structured intelligence, enabling deeper reasoning instead of data dumps.

That distinction matters. Modern AI agents thrive on context-rich inputs. By providing both structured CRM fields and conversational insights, People.ai is aiming to give those agents a more complete understanding of pipeline health.

Competitive Context: Revenue Intelligence Gets Agentic

The revenue intelligence space has evolved from basic activity tracking to predictive analytics. Now it’s entering an agentic phase, where AI agents autonomously surface risks, suggest next actions, and answer complex business questions.

But as AI tools proliferate, integration becomes the bottleneck.

Rather than forcing teams into a proprietary interface, People.ai is leaning into accessibility:

• No additional logins

• No context switching

• AI queries within existing tools

• Answers enriched with complete activity data

For enterprises standardizing on Copilot, ChatGPT, Slack bots, or internal AI agents, that flexibility could be a strategic advantage.

The Bottom Line

AI in revenue operations is only as strong as the data foundation beneath it. And that foundation has historically been shaky.

With its MCP integration, People.ai is positioning itself not as another AI layer—but as the intelligence substrate powering enterprise sales agents. By bridging structured CRM data with the messy, unstructured reality of customer engagement, the company is attempting to close a critical gap in agentic revenue workflows.

As AI becomes embedded in more enterprise decision-making, the winners won’t just be the tools that answer questions fastest. They’ll be the ones that answer them correctly.

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Customer experience platforms are under pressure to do more than promise transformation. They have to show measurable gains—faster resolutions, tighter forecasting, and smoother cross-channel journeys.

8x8, Inc. is positioning its latest updates as exactly that: practical AI enhancements embedded directly into the 8x8 Platform for CX. Rather than bolting on generative features, the company says it has woven AI into the operational core of its contact center, workforce management, and collaboration stack.

The result, according to 8x8, is lower handle times, improved forecast accuracy, and more seamless customer engagement across channels.

AI at the Point of Conversation

The headline update centers on speed and context. With Customer 360, 8x8 turns its Agent Workspace into a unified customer hub, pulling together cross-channel history, profile data, and AI-driven insights such as sentiment analysis and top discussion topics.

Instead of toggling between tools, agents see everything in one interface. That consolidated view aims to shorten resolution cycles and make personalization less dependent on memory and more dependent on data.

Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer at 8x8, was explicit about the company’s positioning: this isn’t “AI-washing.” The focus, he says, is on reducing operational friction and improving customer outcomes at scale.

In a market where AI features are proliferating across CX vendors, embedding automation directly into workflows—not just dashboards—has become the new battleground.

Workforce Management, No Add-On Required

Another notable move: 8x8 Workforce Management is now included in every 8x8 Contact Center package.

That means forecasting, scheduling, and shift management are no longer optional extras. By bundling WFM capabilities into the base offering, 8x8 is responding to a key enterprise pain point—tool sprawl.

Accurate forecasting isn’t just a back-office metric. It determines staffing levels, wait times, and ultimately customer satisfaction. By tightening forecast accuracy and streamlining shift management, 8x8 aims to reduce the gap between predicted and actual service demand.

In an environment of tightening margins, operational precision matters as much as customer delight.

Collaboration Meets Compliance

The updates also extend beyond the contact center. 8x8 Work, the company’s unified communications layer, now includes enhanced meeting scalability controls and navigation improvements aligned with WCAG accessibility standards.

There’s also stronger real-time visibility into staff coverage, along with self-service controls that help teams adjust quickly to spikes in demand.

This reflects a broader industry trend: the line between contact center and internal collaboration is dissolving. Customers don’t care whether their issue spans support, billing, or sales—they expect continuity. Platforms that unify communications and CX infrastructure have a structural advantage in delivering that consistency.

WhatsApp Gets a Bigger Role

Customer engagement doesn’t stop at voice or web chat. Businesses can now engage customers via interactive flows and one-tap voice calling through WhatsApp.

Interactive messaging on WhatsApp can reduce friction in common workflows—appointment confirmations, service updates, order tracking—while escalating seamlessly to voice when needed.

8x8 also introduced automated MM Lite onboarding and WhatsApp Business App plus Cloud API co-existence. In practical terms, this allows organizations to scale messaging campaigns and automation without disrupting existing setups or compromising data protection.

As messaging platforms continue to dominate global customer interactions, tighter integration with WhatsApp is less a feature and more a necessity.

One Platform Strategy

The strategic thread tying these updates together is consolidation. The 8x8 Platform for CX unifies:

• Contact center

• Unified communications

• Communication APIs

All on a single AI-powered foundation.

That unified architecture is increasingly important as enterprises look to simplify vendor stacks. Multiple disconnected systems may offer best-of-breed capabilities, but they often create fragmented data and inconsistent workflows.

By embedding AI across a single platform, 8x8 is betting that integrated intelligence delivers stronger business momentum than isolated automation.

Competitive Context

The CX market is crowded with vendors layering generative AI onto legacy systems. The differentiator now is execution—how deeply AI is integrated and how directly it impacts measurable KPIs.

Reducing average handle time. Improving forecast accuracy. Increasing first-contact resolution. Those are metrics that CFOs and COOs track, not just CX leaders.

If 8x8 can demonstrate sustained improvements in those areas, it strengthens its case against competitors offering either standalone contact center solutions or communications platforms without deep CX integration.

The Bottom Line

AI in customer experience has moved beyond novelty. Enterprises want operational leverage.

With its latest updates, 8x8 is positioning AI as a built-in force multiplier across conversation context, workforce management, collaboration, and messaging. The message is clear: AI shouldn’t just sound intelligent—it should shorten queues, tighten forecasts, and accelerate outcomes.

In a climate where customer expectations are rising and budgets are under scrutiny, that practical focus may be exactly what the market demands.

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AI experimentation is easy. AI you can trust at scale? That’s harder.

As enterprises move from pilot projects to business-critical AI deployments, the central question is no longer access to models. It’s oversight. Today, Dataiku is tackling that problem head-on with the launch of the 575 Lab, its new Open Source Office focused on building trust infrastructure for modern AI systems.

The initiative debuts with two open-source toolkits aimed at making enterprise AI more transparent, governable, and secure—particularly in the emerging world of agentic AI systems.

From AI Access to AI Accountability

For the past two years, enterprises have raced to integrate large language models and AI agents into workflows. But as these systems take on more autonomous roles—triggering actions, making recommendations, and orchestrating multi-step processes—the governance challenge has intensified.

Open source, Dataiku argues, offers a structural advantage.

Hannes Hapke, Director of the 575 Lab, frames it succinctly: open source isn’t just a distribution model—it’s a trust model. When core components are inspectable and standardized, enterprises can verify how systems operate rather than relying on opaque assurances.

That philosophy underpins the lab’s first two projects.

Agent Explainability Tools: Opening the Black Box

The first toolkit focuses on agent explainability.

Modern AI agents often execute multi-step workflows—pulling data, reasoning over it, calling tools, and making decisions. While impressive, these layered actions can be difficult to trace.

Dataiku’s Agent Explainability Tools are designed to help teams:

• Trace decision-making across multi-step agent workflows

• Understand how conclusions were reached

• Provide visibility for data scientists, compliance teams, and end users

In regulated industries, that traceability isn’t optional. Whether it’s financial services evaluating risk decisions or healthcare systems managing patient workflows, the ability to explain “why” is as important as the output itself.

As agentic ecosystems grow more complex, explainability tools could become foundational rather than supplementary.

Privacy-Preserving Proxies: Safer Use of Closed Models

The second project tackles another enterprise tension: leveraging powerful closed-source models while protecting sensitive data.

Privacy-Preserving Proxies are designed to:

• Protect sensitive data end-to-end

• Enable safer interaction with closed-source models

• Run locally within enterprise environments

Many organizations hesitate to send proprietary or regulated data into external AI APIs. By introducing proxy layers that sanitize and manage data flows, Dataiku aims to reduce that risk without sacrificing access to high-performing models.

This reflects a broader industry shift. Enterprises increasingly want hybrid AI stacks—combining open and closed models, internal tools, and external APIs. Governance layers that mediate those interactions are becoming critical infrastructure.

Open Standards for Agentic AI

The 575 Lab builds on Dataiku’s decade of enterprise AI experience and extends its involvement in the open-source ecosystem. The company is a member of the Linux Foundation and the Agentic AI Foundation, signaling an intent to collaborate rather than operate in isolation.

Florian Douetteau, CEO and co-founder of Dataiku, emphasizes reusable building blocks as the goal. As enterprises construct increasingly complex agentic ecosystems, standardized control and inspection mechanisms will likely emerge as industry norms. By contributing these tools in the open, Dataiku hopes to help shape those standards.

The timing is strategic. As regulatory scrutiny intensifies globally, enterprises are under pressure to demonstrate responsible AI practices. Toolkits that support explainability, privacy, and governance may soon be prerequisites for large-scale deployments.

Competitive and Market Context

Enterprise AI platforms are rapidly adding governance features—model monitoring, bias detection, compliance reporting. What differentiates 575 Lab is its open-source orientation.

Rather than locking governance capabilities inside proprietary systems, Dataiku is pushing foundational components into the open. That approach may appeal to large enterprises wary of vendor lock-in and eager to align with emerging community standards.

At the same time, open-source governance tools can accelerate adoption by enabling cross-platform compatibility. In agentic AI environments where multiple vendors’ systems interact, interoperability matters.

If successful, 575 Lab could position Dataiku not just as an AI platform provider, but as a contributor to the trust infrastructure underpinning enterprise AI at large.

Availability and Community Involvement

The 575 Lab is now open to AI specialists, data scientists, developers, and enterprise partners. Community members can follow the projects, contribute, and help shape what Dataiku describes as “open trust infrastructure” for AI at scale.

That community-driven approach aligns with the broader open-source ethos: transparency, collaboration, and shared accountability.

The Bottom Line

As AI systems become more autonomous and more consequential, enterprises need more than model access. They need visibility, control, and standards they can rely on.

With 575 Lab, Dataiku is betting that trust in AI will be built not just through performance benchmarks, but through open, inspectable foundations. In the race toward agentic enterprise systems, governance may prove to be the most valuable innovation of all.

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Design software darling Figma just delivered its strongest quarter on record—and it’s doing so while reshaping itself into a broader AI-powered product development platform.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, Figma reported $303.8 million in revenue, up 40% year-over-year and above guidance. For the full year, revenue crossed the billion-dollar mark for the first time, reaching $1.056 billion, a 41% annual increase.

If 2024 was about IPO headlines and post-merger drama, 2025 was about operational momentum.

The Financials: Growth With Discipline

Q4 marked Figma’s best quarter for net new revenue on record. Key highlights include:

• Revenue: $303.8 million (up 40% YoY)

• Non-GAAP operating income: $44.0 million (14% margin)

• Operating cash flow: $39.9 million (13% margin)

• Cash and marketable securities: $1.7 billion

For the full fiscal year:

• Revenue: $1.056 billion (up 41% YoY)

• International revenue growth: 45%

• Operating cash flow: $250.7 million (24% margin)

• Adjusted free cash flow margin: 23%

On a GAAP basis, the company posted a $1.3 billion net loss for the year, largely driven by a one-time $975.7 million stock-based compensation expense tied to its IPO. Strip that out, and Figma reported $166.8 million in non-GAAP net income.

In other words: headline losses, but underlying profitability and cash generation look healthy.

Enterprise Expansion and Retention

Figma’s enterprise penetration continues to deepen:

• Net Dollar Retention Rate: 136%

• 13,861 customers with more than $10,000 in ARR

• 1,405 customers above $100,000 in ARR

• 67 customers exceeding $1 million in ARR

A 136% retention rate signals strong expansion within existing accounts—an indicator that Figma isn’t just landing teams; it’s embedding itself across organizations.

CFO Praveer Melwani emphasized platform-led adoption across enterprise and international markets as a key growth driver. The company enters 2026 with projected first-quarter revenue between $315 million and $317 million, implying 38% growth. Full-year 2026 guidance points to roughly 30% growth.

That’s slower than 2025, but still elite territory for a company of this scale.

AI Is Now the Growth Engine

While financials tell one story, product evolution tells another.

Figma is no longer “just” a design tool. Its AI initiatives are expanding how teams ideate, prototype, and ship.

Weekly active users of Figma Make—its AI-powered app-building and prototyping tool—grew over 70% quarter-over-quarter. Notably, more than half of customers generating over $100,000 in ARR are now building in Figma Make weekly.

Even more telling: over 80% of Figma Make’s weekly active users on Full seats also used Figma Design during the quarter. That cross-product usage suggests AI features are enhancing, not cannibalizing, core workflows.

Deepening AI Integrations

Figma expanded its AI ecosystem aggressively in Q4:

• Support for experimental models Gemini 3 Pro and Claude Opus 4.6 within Figma Make

• “Claude Code to Figma,” allowing UIs generated in Claude Code to import directly into Figma’s canvas as editable layers

• Launch of Figma MCP app inside Claude, enabling diagram and Gantt chart creation via chat

• Expanded integration with ChatGPT to generate FigJam diagrams, Buzz marketing assets, and Slides presentations

The partnership with Anthropic reflects a broader AI ecosystem strategy. Rather than building a closed system, Figma is integrating deeply with leading AI platforms.

In a world where prompts increasingly initiate product workflows, Figma wants to be the canvas where those outputs are refined, iterated, and shipped.

Image Editing and the Weavy Acquisition

Figma also launched three AI-powered image editing tools directly inside its canvas. Complementing that move, it acquired Weavy—now rebranded as Figma Weave—which combines leading AI models with professional editing tools in a browser-based environment.

That acquisition signals Figma’s intent to expand beyond UI design into broader creative workflows, potentially competing more directly with creative tool incumbents.

Global Expansion: India in Focus

Figma opened a new office in Bengaluru and announced local data hosting and governance support for enterprise customers in India, now its second-largest market by monthly active users.

With international revenue growing 45% year-over-year, global expansion is no longer a side story—it’s central to the company’s growth thesis.

Strategic Positioning in the Product Stack

CEO Dylan Field framed Figma’s role as central to the product development stack—whether work begins in a terminal, a prompt box, or a hand-drawn sketch.

That positioning matters. As AI blurs the lines between design and development, Figma is aiming to remain the connective layer between ideation and execution.

Its abandoned merger with Adobe is now history. What remains is a publicly traded company with strong cash reserves, accelerating AI integration, and expanding enterprise adoption.

The Outlook

For 2026, Figma projects:

• Q1 revenue: $315–$317 million

• Full-year revenue: $1.366–$1.374 billion

• Non-GAAP operating income: $100–$110 million

Growth is expected to moderate from 41% to roughly 30%, but with sustained profitability and expanding platform adoption, that slowdown appears more like normalization than weakness.

The Bottom Line

Figma’s latest earnings show a company scaling rapidly while evolving into an AI-powered collaboration platform. Revenue growth remains strong, enterprise retention is high, and AI adoption is accelerating across its ecosystem.

As product teams increasingly begin their workflows in AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, Figma is positioning itself not as a replacement—but as the creative control center where AI outputs become polished products.

If 2025 proved it could grow post-IPO, 2026 will test whether AI-driven platform expansion can sustain that momentum.

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As financial advisors double down on in-person seminars to drive client acquisition, one marketing tech firm is betting big on infrastructure to make those events more predictable—and more profitable.

AcquireUp, a technology-first seminar marketing company serving financial professionals, has appointed Jim Parkinson as its new Chief Technology and Information Officer. The move signals a deeper push into AI, platform scalability, and data-driven performance measurement for advisors relying on educational seminars as a primary growth channel.

Parkinson will oversee product development, data sciences, IT engineering, and infrastructure, with a mandate to strengthen AcquireUp’s managed marketing services and its proprietary LeadJig platform.

Why This Hire Matters

Seminar marketing isn’t new. What’s changing is how it’s measured, optimized, and automated.

Financial advisors have long used live educational events to build trust and convert attendees into clients. But the operational side—lead tracking, follow-ups, conversion analytics, compliance guardrails—has often lagged behind the sophistication seen in digital marketing stacks.

AcquireUp is positioning LeadJig as a modernized answer to that gap: a platform that brings structured data, workflow automation, and increasingly AI-driven insights to what has historically been a manual and relationship-heavy process.

Parkinson’s appointment suggests the company is serious about transforming that stack into something more scalable—and more defensible.

“Jim’s depth of experience building scalable platforms and leading complex technology organizations makes him a tremendous addition,” said CEO Greg Bogich, noting that Parkinson will help advisors more predictably convert seminars into net new asset growth.

Predictability is the keyword. In wealth management, growth strategies that can’t be measured precisely don’t scale well—and they don’t inspire confidence from compliance teams or enterprise RIAs.

A Cloud and Platform Veteran Steps In

Parkinson isn’t a niche martech hire. His résumé reads more like that of a Silicon Valley infrastructure architect.

He previously spent more than two decades at Sun Microsystems, where he held multiple senior leadership roles, including Senior Vice President of Software Products and Cloud Computing Engineering. During that time, he led the team that built what the company described as the world’s first utility computing platform—a precursor to modern cloud computing models.

Sun Microsystems’ early work in distributed systems and cloud-style infrastructure laid groundwork that would later influence enterprise cloud adoption. That background matters as AcquireUp looks to scale a platform used by advisors across geographies, regulatory environments, and business models.

More recently, Parkinson served as Chief Digital Officer and Executive Vice President of Digital Advertising at Valassis, where he oversaw enterprise technology strategy and digital media initiatives. He also held the role of Chief Technology and Information Officer in the credit card processing industry, leading product and engineering for processing and acquiring platforms.

That combination—cloud infrastructure, digital advertising, and payments—points to a leader comfortable with high-volume systems, compliance-heavy environments, and performance-based business models.

In other words: exactly the type of background needed to evolve a marketing platform serving financial advisors.

AI and the Rise of “Agentic” Marketing Infrastructure

AcquireUp has been vocal about incorporating AI across its operations. Parkinson emphasized plans to enhance both employee workflows and customer experiences using AI, including what the company refers to as an “Agentic AI approach.”

Agentic AI—systems capable of executing multi-step tasks autonomously within defined guardrails—is increasingly becoming a buzzword across enterprise tech. In martech and fintech, its appeal lies in automating complex workflows while maintaining auditability and compliance.

For financial advisors, that could mean:

• Smarter segmentation of seminar invite lists

• AI-assisted follow-up sequences tailored to attendee behavior

• Predictive models for seminar-to-client conversion rates

• Performance dashboards that surface anomalies or compliance risks

If executed well, these capabilities could transform seminars from a relationship-first, data-second tactic into a tightly optimized acquisition engine.

And that’s where Parkinson’s platform experience becomes critical. Agentic systems are only as strong as the infrastructure supporting them—data pipelines, security controls, uptime guarantees, and governance frameworks.

The Broader MarTech Context

AcquireUp operates at the intersection of martech and wealth management—a space that’s heating up as advisors face rising acquisition costs and increasing competition from robo-advisors and digital-first firms.

Unlike pure-play digital lead generation companies, AcquireUp blends managed services with proprietary technology. That hybrid model mirrors broader trends in B2B tech, where software-plus-services offerings are becoming common in vertical markets that require regulatory sensitivity and high-touch engagement.

Competitors in financial advisor marketing have invested heavily in digital funnels, social advertising, and automated nurturing campaigns. What differentiates AcquireUp’s approach is its continued focus on in-person educational seminars, combined with a tech backbone designed to quantify and optimize the entire lifecycle.

By strengthening LeadJig’s engineering foundation, AcquireUp appears to be betting that analog trust-building experiences can coexist with digital-grade analytics and automation.

Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage

The announcement also reflects a wider industry shift: marketing companies are increasingly judged not just by creative output but by technical depth.

Financial services firms, in particular, demand:

• Data security and compliance controls

• Transparent performance attribution

• Integration with CRM and portfolio management systems

• Scalable infrastructure for multi-office enterprises

Parkinson’s background in large-scale systems suggests AcquireUp intends to compete less like an agency and more like a SaaS platform provider with managed services layered on top.

That positioning could make the company more attractive to larger RIAs and enterprise advisory networks that require robust IT governance.

What Comes Next

AcquireUp says it will continue investing in its technology and operational infrastructure to support advisors who rely on seminars as a core growth strategy. Parkinson’s mandate spans product, data science, engineering, and IT—effectively giving him control over the entire technical backbone of the business.

If LeadJig evolves into a more intelligent, AI-assisted operating system for seminar marketing, the company could carve out a defensible niche in a fragmented market.

The bigger question is whether advisors—often cautious adopters of emerging tech—will embrace agentic AI tools in a heavily regulated industry. That adoption curve will likely hinge on one factor: measurable, compliant results.

With a veteran cloud and digital infrastructure executive now at the helm of its technology strategy, AcquireUp is clearly preparing for that next phase.

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Social media marketing in 2026 isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about knowing which platform deserves your budget—and your patience.

That’s the headline takeaway from the latest benchmark data released by Emplifi, whose 2026 Social Media Benchmark Report analyzes performance data from tens of thousands of global brands using its CX and social media marketing platform.

The results? A widening performance gap between platforms—and a clear winner.

TikTok Is No Longer Experimental. It’s Essential.

According to Emplifi’s data, TikTok saw median follower counts for brands jump 200% year-over-year in 2025. That’s not incremental growth. That’s acceleration.

Even more striking:

• TikTok delivered a median engagement rate of 27.6% in Q4 2025, the highest across major platforms.

• It generated twice the median interactions of Instagram.

• It produced 20 times the median interactions of Facebook.

For brands still treating TikTok as a secondary test channel, the data suggests they’re leaving engagement—and likely revenue—on the table.

Susan Ganeshan, CMO at Emplifi, put it bluntly: platforms are rewarding different behaviors, and performance is becoming increasingly platform-specific. Translation: one-size-fits-all content strategies are officially obsolete.

Instagram: Still Strong, But Slipping

Instagram remains a core brand-building channel, but engagement momentum has cooled.

Median engagement rates fell from 16.9% in Q1 2024 to 9.7% in Q4 2025—a significant drop in under two years. Follower growth remained steady, but only in the mid-single digits.

However, not all formats are struggling:

• Carousels and Reels generated 44% more engagement than image posts.

• Video content on Instagram produced 30 times more engagement than Facebook video, making it the second-strongest environment for video performance after TikTok.

• Instagram Reels ad spend tripled between Q1 2024 and Q4 2025.

The signal here isn’t that Instagram is fading. It’s that brands must align tightly with format trends. Static image grids won’t cut it anymore.

Facebook: Predictable Reach, Limited Growth

Facebook continues to offer steady, if unremarkable, performance.

• Median engagement rates ranged between 1.4% and 2.5% across 2024–2025.

• Follower growth remained flat.

• Median ad spend per account stayed relatively stable, ranging from $8.5K to $11.2K.

But there’s a twist: format still matters.

Facebook Live videos generated a median of 37.5 interactions per post, outperforming link posts by four times and image posts by six times. Meanwhile, Feed Ads accounted for 70% to 80% of total Facebook ad spend every quarter.

In other words, Facebook may not be the growth engine—but it remains a reliable reach channel, particularly for advertisers seeking scale and consistency.

LinkedIn and X: Niche Gains, Targeted Impact

LinkedIn posted double-digit median follower growth, particularly tied to employer branding, professional positioning, and thought leadership content. For B2B marketers, that’s a strong indicator that strategic investment here still pays dividends.

Meanwhile, on X, lightweight formats ruled. GIFs generated a median of seven interactions per post, reinforcing the platform’s preference for fast, scroll-friendly content.

Neither platform matches TikTok’s explosive engagement rates, but both show that focused use cases can still drive results.

The Ad Spend Reality Check

One of the most telling data points in Emplifi’s report isn’t about engagement—it’s about budget allocation.

• TikTok commanded the highest median ad spend per account, reaching $14.9K in Q4 2025.

• Facebook followed with stable investment levels.

• Instagram posted the lowest overall spend per account at $5.1K in Q4 2025, despite rising investment in Reels.

This suggests marketers are voting with their budgets—and increasingly treating TikTok as a primary performance channel rather than an experimental add-on.

That shift aligns with broader industry sentiment. According to EMARKETER, social media marketers cited “the ability to reach their target audience” as their top challenge last year—ranking above content trends, ROAS calculation, or cross-channel management.

In a fragmented landscape, reach isn’t guaranteed. Platform alignment is.

Diverging Performance Curves

Perhaps the most important takeaway from the report is structural: performance trends across platforms are diverging faster than ever.

TikTok rewards commitment and content-native creativity. Instagram demands format optimization. Facebook offers consistency but limited upside. LinkedIn thrives on professional authority. X prioritizes brevity.

Brands that adapt to those distinctions are outperforming those that recycle the same creative across channels.

Ganeshan summed it up clearly: the brands seeing the biggest gains on TikTok treat it as a core channel, not a side experiment. But Facebook and Instagram remain essential for steady reach—creating a multi-platform balancing act for marketers.

What This Means for 2026 Strategy

For CMOs and performance marketers, Emplifi’s data reinforces three strategic imperatives:

1. Platform-specific optimization is no longer optional. Algorithms are rewarding native behaviors, not cross-posting shortcuts.

2. Video dominance continues. TikTok leads, Instagram follows, Facebook lags.

3. Budget follows engagement. TikTok’s rising ad spend mirrors its performance gains.

The era of treating social media as a monolithic channel is over. The 2026 playbook demands specialization, commitment, and ongoing recalibration.

For brands willing to adapt, the upside is clear. For those still spreading effort evenly across platforms without strategy, the engagement gap will only widen.

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RegTech consolidation is accelerating—and this one lands squarely in the AI fast lane.

CUBE, a global provider of Automated Regulatory Intelligence (ARI) and Regulatory Change Management (RCM), has acquired 4CRisk.ai, a Silicon Valley-based compliance technology firm known for its agentic AI-driven policy mapping platform.

The deal strengthens CUBE’s position in automated regulatory compliance, extending its capabilities beyond tracking regulatory change into fully automated internal policy and control mapping. In practical terms: identifying new regulations is no longer enough. Enterprises now want AI to tell them exactly what to update, where, and why—without weeks of manual review.

From Regulatory Change to Enterprise-Wide Action

CUBE has built its reputation on regulatory intelligence—monitoring global regulatory developments and helping financial institutions stay ahead of change. With the addition of 4CRisk, the company is pushing deeper into enterprise risk automation.

Founded in 2019, 4CRisk developed a purpose-built compliance and risk platform designed to break down corporate policies and procedures and map them directly to regulatory obligations, controls, and risks. The system operates at granular levels, connecting abstract regulatory language to specific governance artifacts inside an organization.

At the core of its platform are proprietary Specialized Language Models (SLMs) trained on authoritative regulatory compliance and risk data sources. Combined with its AI compliance co-pilot, Ask ARIA, the technology reportedly produces results up to 50 times faster than equivalent manual compliance processes.

That speed differential matters. In large financial institutions and multinational enterprises, updating policy frameworks after regulatory change can involve months of cross-functional analysis. Automation at this layer could dramatically compress response times.

Why This Deal Matters in 2026

Compliance is becoming more complex, not less. Regulatory domains are expanding beyond traditional financial oversight into areas like:

• Cybersecurity

• Artificial intelligence governance

• Data privacy

• Labor laws

• Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) mandates

4CRisk already provides specialized compliance solutions across those domains. By integrating it into CUBE’s broader RegPlatform, customers can now move from detecting regulatory changes to automatically assessing their downstream impact on policies and controls across the enterprise.

Ben Richmond, Founder and CEO of CUBE, described the acquisition as a “natural extension” of the company’s capabilities—one that enables customers to move from understanding regulatory changes to automating governance mapping at scale.

The strategic shift is clear: regulatory intelligence alone is no longer sufficient. Enterprises want closed-loop automation.

Agentic AI Moves Into RegTech

The acquisition also underscores the growing influence of agentic AI in highly regulated industries.

Agentic systems—AI models capable of executing multi-step tasks autonomously within defined parameters—are moving from experimental pilots into production compliance environments. In this context, agentic AI doesn’t just summarize regulations; it maps them, cross-references internal frameworks, flags control gaps, and suggests remediation paths.

Silicon Valley has been a hotbed for this kind of applied AI infrastructure, and Richmond specifically cited the pace of innovation emerging from the region as a factor in the acquisition.

Venky Yerrapotu, Founder and CEO of 4CRisk, emphasized explainability and trust as central pillars of the platform. That’s critical in compliance settings, where AI outputs must be auditable and defensible under regulatory scrutiny.

In heavily regulated sectors, black-box automation is a non-starter. Explainable AI isn’t a feature—it’s a requirement.

Backed by Private Equity, Built for Scale

CUBE’s expansion is supported by investor Hg, which backed the company in 2024 with a strategic focus on building an end-to-end AI-powered compliance platform.

Joshua Gielessen, investor at Hg, framed the acquisition as a key step in executing that strategy—bringing together regulatory intelligence and purpose-built regulatory AI to create a stronger, unified offering.

CUBE now serves more than 1,000 customers globally across financial services and adjacent industries. Its platform spans every regulated country, positioning it as one of the more comprehensive players in the RegTech space.

Notably, both CUBE and 4CRisk were recently named in the RegTech100 for 2026, signaling peer and industry recognition of their innovation in compliance technology.

Competitive Landscape: The Race to Unified Compliance

The RegTech market has seen increasing consolidation as vendors attempt to offer end-to-end solutions rather than point tools. Enterprises are fatigued by fragmented compliance stacks that require manual integration across:

• Regulatory monitoring systems

• Policy management tools

• Risk and control frameworks

• Audit and reporting platforms

By combining regulatory change intelligence with automated policy mapping, CUBE is moving toward a unified compliance operating system.

Rivals in the space have focused on workflow automation or regulatory content aggregation. What differentiates this deal is the deep integration of AI-driven mapping capabilities—particularly with models trained specifically on regulatory and risk corpora.

If successfully integrated, the combined platform could reduce reliance on consulting-heavy compliance processes, a shift that may resonate strongly with global financial institutions facing mounting regulatory pressure.

The Bigger Picture

AI in compliance is shifting from experimentation to infrastructure. Financial institutions and multinational enterprises are demanding faster turnaround, lower operational risk, and greater transparency in how regulations are interpreted and implemented internally.

This acquisition suggests CUBE sees the future of compliance not as advisory support, but as automated orchestration—where AI continuously aligns external regulatory change with internal governance frameworks.

For compliance leaders navigating increasingly complex regulatory landscapes, the promise is clear: fewer manual reviews, faster impact analysis, and stronger audit trails.

Whether CUBE can fully deliver on that vision will depend on seamless integration and continued AI refinement. But the direction is unmistakable.

RegTech’s next phase isn’t just smarter alerts. It’s autonomous compliance mapping.

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When a reality TV institution hits its 50th season, you expect fireworks. What you don’t always expect is a mobile gaming takeover. That’s exactly what Zynga Inc. is delivering with a sweeping, season-long collaboration tied to the milestone return of Survivor.

In partnership with CBS, the Take-Two-owned publisher is rolling out themed integrations across five of its biggest franchises—transforming passive viewers into active participants. The event aligns with Survivor 50’s February 25 premiere, airing on CBS and streaming via Paramount+.

This isn’t a simple cosmetic reskin. It’s a coordinated cross-title strategy designed to capitalize on live TV momentum, player retention loops, and the growing overlap between entertainment IP and mobile gaming.

A Cross-Game Strategy, Not a One-Off Event

Zynga is activating Survivor-themed experiences across:

• Words With Friends

• Zynga Poker

• Two Dots

• FarmVille 3

• Dragon City

Each title adapts Survivor’s competitive DNA—strategy, elimination, teamwork, endurance—to its core mechanics.

Words With Friends integrates Survivor-themed Word of the Day challenges and custom word searches tied to premiere week. Zynga Poker leans into high-stakes drama with six weeks of Survivor Watch Events, offering limited-edition rewards and a sweepstakes trip to the live finale in Los Angeles. Two Dots introduces time-limited puzzle challenges with collectible rewards.

Meanwhile, FarmVille 3 and Dragon City bring the island competition into simulation territory, with themed events, tribe-inspired activities, and competitive races layered into gameplay loops.

In short: this is not a cameo. It’s a season-long live-ops program engineered to sustain engagement across multiple audiences.

Why This Matters for MarTech

From a marketing technology lens, this partnership is a case study in transmedia engagement.

Instead of running standalone promotional ads for Survivor 50, CBS is embedding the brand directly inside daily-use mobile ecosystems. That shifts the marketing play from awareness to participation. Viewers aren’t just reminded the show exists—they’re reenacting it.

For Zynga, the benefits are equally strategic:

• Cross-title retention: Players hopping between games encounter unified thematic content.

• Live-ops amplification: TV airtime fuels recurring in-game events.

• Data capture: Themed challenges provide behavioral insights tied to event-based engagement spikes.

• Monetization lift: Limited-edition rewards and sweepstakes mechanics encourage higher session frequency.

This mirrors broader industry trends where entertainment IP increasingly functions as a live-service engine. Think Fortnite’s concerts or Call of Duty’s crossover events—but tailored for casual and midcore mobile audiences.

“In the Hands of the Fans”

Survivor 50 itself introduces a viewer-driven mechanic—marketed as “In the Hands of the Fans”—where audience decisions influence gameplay outcomes. By syncing mobile integrations with that participatory theme, Zynga reinforces a consistent brand narrative: fans shape the experience.

It’s a smart alignment. Reality TV thrives on community debate and tribal loyalty. Mobile games thrive on daily engagement and progression loops. Combine them, and you create a feedback cycle between broadcast and gameplay.

Competitive Context

Cross-media integrations are hardly new, but few span five titles simultaneously. For Zynga—now operating as a publishing label under Take-Two Interactive—this signals a mature live-ops infrastructure capable of coordinated deployment at scale.

It also reflects the increasingly blurred lines between gaming and traditional entertainment marketing. As user acquisition costs rise and organic discovery declines, leveraging tentpole IP moments becomes a cost-efficient way to spike attention without starting from zero.

The Bigger Picture

Survivor 50 brings back 24 legendary contestants from across 49 seasons, chasing the franchise’s familiar $1 million prize. But this collaboration suggests the bigger prize may be sustained cross-platform engagement.

If successful, expect more networks to treat mobile games not as peripheral licensing deals, but as integrated marketing channels with measurable ROI.

For players, it’s simple: solve the puzzle, bluff the hand, farm the crops, race the dragon. For marketers, it’s something else entirely—a live demonstration of how broadcast television can still move the needle in a mobile-first world.

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