Connected TV is no longer just where brands go to build awareness. Increasingly, it’s where they expect proof.

That shift is central to JamLoop’s latest leadership move. The CTV-first advertising platform has named Jeff Fagel as its new Chief Marketing Officer, while promoting longtime marketing leader Oksana Korsakova to Chief Operating Officer. Together, the appointments signal JamLoop’s intent to scale aggressively as advertisers push harder for measurable outcomes from streaming TV.

JamLoop positions itself at the intersection of TV-scale reach and digital-style accountability—a space that’s growing rapidly as local and mid-market advertisers rethink where performance dollars should go next.

A Leadership Bet on Performance CTV

Fagel joins JamLoop at a moment when CTV is undergoing a credibility test. As streaming ad inventory explodes, marketers are demanding the same clarity they expect from paid search or social: targeting precision, transparent pricing, and defensible ROI.

JamLoop’s pitch is that legacy DSPs and walled-garden platforms weren’t built for that reality—especially for local and performance-focused advertisers. The company claims its platform was designed from the ground up to prioritize outcomes over opacity.

“JamLoop was built to simplify and modernize how TV advertising gets done,” said Leif Welch, CEO and Founder of JamLoop. “We saw the limitations of legacy DSPs and walled gardens—and knew there was a better way.”

That “better way,” according to Welch, requires not just technology but a clear category narrative—one Fagel has experience building.

Why Jeff Fagel, Why Now

Fagel is a four-time CMO with deep roots in adtech, CTV, and brand marketing. His resume spans platforms like Epsilon and Madhive, where he worked across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB segments—exactly the range JamLoop targets today.

Earlier in his career, Fagel held senior brand and retail marketing roles at PepsiCo, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, and ConAgra, experience that grounds his perspective in how brands actually evaluate media performance.

That mix matters as CTV matures. While streaming inventory has scaled quickly, confidence hasn’t always kept pace. Many advertisers still struggle to reconcile TV-style buying with digital-style measurement.

“Advertisers no longer see CTV as just an awareness channel,” Fagel said. “They’re asking the same questions they ask of every other digital channel: ‘What did I get for my spend?’”

JamLoop’s leadership clearly believes Fagel can help position CTV not as an experimental add-on, but as a core performance channel.

JamLoop’s Growth Signals Momentum

The executive shuffle comes amid strong growth metrics that suggest JamLoop is finding product-market fit in a crowded CTV ecosystem.

Over the past year, the company reports:

• 35% year-over-year revenue growth

• 48% increase in average revenue per customer

• Launch of a fully self-serve CTV platform

• Expansion beyond CTV into display, audio, and pause ads

• A national white-label partnership with a major streaming platform

• Industry recognition from Deloitte Fast 500, AdExchanger Power Players, Inc. Power Partners, and the Stevie Awards for Tech Excellence

These moves point to a broader strategy: meet advertisers wherever they sit on the spectrum, from white-glove managed services to fully self-serve and white-label solutions.

Built for Local Precision at National Scale

JamLoop’s platform is designed to appeal to advertisers who often feel underserved by enterprise DSPs: local businesses, regional brands, and agencies that need performance without complexity.

The company emphasizes simplicity and transparency, offering marketers control over targeting, measurement, and outcomes without forcing them into opaque buying models.

This focus aligns with a broader industry trend. As CTV inventory becomes more commoditized, differentiation increasingly comes from usability, transparency, and proof of performance—not just access to premium screens.

JamLoop’s expansion into formats like pause ads and audio also reflects a push to capture attention across the full streaming experience, not just traditional video placements.

Oksana Korsakova Takes the Operational Helm

While Fagel shapes JamLoop’s external narrative, Oksana Korsakova will now be responsible for making sure the company can scale internally.

After leading marketing since 2023, Korsakova steps into the COO role with 17 years of experience across advertising and SaaS technology. Her background spans operations, sales enablement, finance, and customer strategy—areas that become critical as platforms move from growth to scale.

“Performance is in our DNA, and so is accountability,” Korsakova said. “As advertisers expect more from CTV—more transparency, quicker creative, real partnership—it’s our job to remove all barriers to successful campaigns.”

Her mandate includes scaling JamLoop’s service, success, and delivery teams, while strengthening publisher and data partnerships that underpin campaign performance.

What This Means for the CTV Market

JamLoop’s leadership changes reflect a larger recalibration happening across adtech.

CTV is no longer just competing with linear TV—it’s competing with paid search, social, and retail media for performance budgets. Platforms that can’t clearly articulate value, attribution, and outcomes risk being deprioritized.

By pairing a seasoned category marketer with an operations-focused COO, JamLoop appears to be betting that the next phase of CTV growth will be won not just with inventory, but with clarity and execution.

For advertisers increasingly skeptical of black-box media buying, that message may resonate.

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For years, B2B websites have been treated as static brand destinations—important, but often disconnected from how buyers actually research, evaluate, and decide. PAN believes that era is over.

The global, data-driven marketing and PR agency has launched PAN B2B Web Services, a new offering designed to help B2B tech and healthcare brands rethink their websites as living, measurable growth engines. The move formalizes what has already become a natural extension of PAN’s integrated marketing and PR work: shaping brand narratives and then bringing them to life through high-performing digital experiences.

The timing is deliberate. As buyer journeys fragment across search, social, AI-driven discovery, and earned media, brands are under pressure to ensure their websites do more than look good—they must convert interest into action.

Why PAN Is Betting on the Website—Again

In theory, the website has always been central to B2B marketing. In practice, it’s often the least integrated part of the stack.

PAN says it has seen the same pattern repeatedly. Brands bring the agency in for PR, content, or demand generation. Strategy sharpens. Messaging evolves. And eventually, the website becomes the bottleneck—unable to support the story being told everywhere else.

Just as often, the relationship starts the other way around. A company engages PAN for a website overhaul, then realizes that the same team shaping its digital foundation is well-positioned to drive long-term PR, content, and integrated marketing.

The common thread is connection. Brands want fewer handoffs, faster execution, and clearer results. PAN’s new web services offering is designed to meet that demand head-on.

A Modern Take on B2B Web Strategy

PAN is positioning its web services as analytics-led and strategy-first, not design-first.

“Your website is where prospects confirm your value and decide whether to continue the conversation,” said Chris Nardone, VP of Integrated Marketing and Web Services at PAN. “We build sites that are guided by data and grounded in strategy.”

That philosophy underpins a full-lifecycle approach that spans discovery, messaging, design, development, and long-term optimization. Rather than treating launch as the finish line, PAN emphasizes continuous improvement tied to business outcomes.

At the core of the approach is the agency’s PAN Pathway framework, which provides structure without locking clients into rigid processes—an important distinction as B2B buying behavior continues to evolve.

Built Around How Buyers Actually Search

One of the most notable aspects of PAN’s offering is how closely it aligns web strategy with modern search behavior.

Search is no longer limited to blue links. Buyers now encounter brands through traditional search, AI-generated overviews, industry content, and earned media—often before they ever visit a homepage. PAN’s model assumes the website is still critical, but no longer the starting point.

Instead, it’s the place buyers go to validate credibility, understand differentiation, and decide whether to engage further.

That perspective shapes the core service components.

Strategic Foundations First

PAN begins with deep technical, UX, and SEO audits designed to surface structural issues that may be holding performance back. These audits go beyond surface-level optimization to examine how content, navigation, and architecture align with both user intent and business priorities.

Analytics play a central role here. Content direction is informed by real data—what users search for, how they move through the site, and where friction appears in the journey.

The goal is clarity: for buyers, and for internal teams tasked with managing the site long after launch.

Design and UX That Reduce Friction

Design, in PAN’s model, is a means to an end—not the end itself.

Updated navigation and information architecture are built to make user journeys clearer and faster. Design systems are developed through collaborative workshops, moodboards, and iterative exploration, ensuring stakeholders are aligned before development begins.

This approach reflects a broader shift in B2B web design. Buyers increasingly expect consumer-grade usability, even when evaluating complex products or services. Sites that confuse or slow them down don’t get second chances.

Content, SEO, and Development Built for Scale

Content creation is tightly integrated with SEO and development, rather than treated as a final layer.

PAN emphasizes structured, technical content that supports both traditional search engines and AI-driven discovery. That includes clarity of messaging, semantic structure, and performance considerations that help sites remain visible as search continues to evolve.

On the development side, PAN focuses on scalable builds and simplified CMS environments. The aim is to give marketing teams control without sacrificing performance or security—an ongoing pain point for many B2B organizations.

Long-term monitoring and optimization are baked into the model, reinforcing the idea that a website is never truly “done.”

An AI-Informed, Cross-Functional Approach

AI is woven throughout PAN’s web practice, but not as a buzzword feature.

The agency applies AI-informed research and search insights across engagements, using techniques like structured content, schema enhancements, readability optimization, and AI-focused audits. The goal is to help brands stay visible not just in search results, but across emerging AI-driven discovery platforms.

Importantly, this work is delivered by cross-functional teams that combine UX, design, development, analytics, and B2B storytelling. That mirrors PAN’s broader brand-to-demand methodology, ensuring the website connects seamlessly with PR, content, demand generation, and earned media.

The outcome, PAN argues, is a site that actively supports growth rather than sitting passively at the center of the ecosystem.

Challenging the “AI Ends the Journey” Narrative

PAN is also pushing back on a growing assumption in the market: that AI summaries and overviews will replace websites altogether.

“There’s a lot of noise suggesting the buyer journey stops at AI Overviews, but that simply isn’t the case,” Nardone said. “AI is another surface, but it’s not the last, or only, one.”

From PAN’s perspective, AI increases the importance of the website—not decreases it. As discovery becomes more fragmented, brands need a destination that delivers consistency, depth, and credibility once interest is sparked.

That belief shapes the long-term focus of the new service line: sustained optimization, not one-off redesigns.

What This Signals for B2B Marketing

PAN’s move reflects a broader trend across B2B marketing agencies. As lines blur between PR, demand, content, and digital experience, clients are gravitating toward partners that can operate across the full funnel.

Websites sit at the center of that convergence. They are where messaging, search, UX, and conversion collide—and where misalignment becomes most visible.

By formalizing its web services offering, PAN is betting that connected thinking will win over fragmented execution. For B2B brands navigating AI-driven discovery, longer buying cycles, and increasing pressure to prove ROI, that integration may be less of a luxury and more of a requirement.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Independent agencies don’t often dominate the biggest stages in Asia-Pacific marketing. When they do, it usually signals something bigger than a strong year of campaigns.

That’s the context behind CREATIP’s latest recognition. The Korea-based digital marketing agency has won Gold in the Independent Agency of the Year category and Silver for Performance Marketing Agency of the Year at the 2025 Agency of the Year (AOY) Awards, hosted by Campaign.

Among APAC agencies, Independent Agency of the Year—Gold is widely considered one of the most competitive honors, judging not just creative output or short-term performance, but the fundamentals that sustain long-term growth: financial health, strategic rigor, innovation, culture, leadership, and regional expansion.

CREATIP didn’t just place well—it stood out.

Why the AOY Gold Matters

The AOY Awards are designed to look beyond headline campaigns. Agencies are evaluated across a broad set of criteria, including:

• Business and revenue growth

• Strategic excellence and innovation

• Creative consistency

• Organizational culture and leadership

• Regional and global expansion

For independent agencies, the bar is especially high. Without the backing of global holding companies, winners are expected to demonstrate operational resilience, financial stability, and a clear competitive advantage.

CREATIP’s Gold win signals that it has moved beyond being a strong local player and into the ranks of independently run agencies shaping the APAC marketing landscape.

Performance Marketing, Backed by Data and AI

In addition to its top honor, CREATIP earned Silver in the Performance Marketing Agency of the Year category, reinforcing its reputation as a data-first growth partner for brands entering or expanding across Asia.

Judges highlighted the agency’s strengths in:

• Data-driven media planning and execution

• ROI-focused performance strategies

• AI-powered optimization models

• Consistent results across Korea, Japan, and broader APAC markets

This recognition reflects a broader shift in brand expectations. Performance marketing in Asia—particularly in markets like Korea and Japan—demands local platform expertise, advanced analytics, and cultural fluency. CREATIP’s ability to combine all three has become a defining differentiator.

A Track Record of Consistent Recognition

The 2025 wins are not a one-off moment for CREATIP. Since 2020, the agency has been recognized every year at the AOY Awards, with previous honors spanning Influencer Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

That consistency matters. In an industry where agency performance can fluctuate year to year, sustained recognition suggests disciplined execution rather than isolated success.

In 2025, CREATIP further strengthened its market position after being officially appointed as a NAVER Certified Agency—a critical milestone in Korea’s digital ecosystem.

NAVER Certification: A Strategic Advantage in Korea

For brands entering Korea, NAVER is not optional—it is foundational. Unlike Western markets dominated by Google, Korea’s search, content, and advertising environment is deeply shaped by NAVER’s platforms.

CREATIP’s certification expanded its capabilities across:

• NAVER search and display advertising

• Platform-specific data analysis

• AI-enhanced bid and performance optimization

• Integrated NAVER marketing strategies aligned with local consumer behavior

This expertise has become particularly valuable for global brands unfamiliar with Korea’s digital nuances, where imported strategies often fail without deep local adaptation.

Expanding Beyond Korea: Japan and Taipei, China

CREATIP’s AOY recognition also reflects its growing regional footprint.

After launching its Japan office in 2023, the agency began supporting brands navigating one of Asia’s most complex and high-expectation markets. Japan’s digital ecosystem requires a balance of performance rigor, brand trust, and culturally specific creative execution—an area where many global agencies struggle.

Now, CREATIP is preparing its next expansion phase. The company has confirmed plans to open a Taipei, China office in January 2026, creating a three-market operational network across Korea, Japan, and Taipei, China.

This regional structure is designed to deliver:

• Localized creative and messaging

• Influencer and social strategies tailored by market

• Performance marketing optimized for regional platforms

• Closer collaboration with publishers and ecosystem partners

Rather than offering one-size-fits-all APAC solutions, CREATIP is positioning itself as a network of locally embedded teams operating under a unified strategy.

Building an APAC Growth Platform for Global Brands

CREATIP’s integrated model spans influencer marketing, social content, brand strategy, and performance-driven growth—an increasingly important combination as brand and demand objectives converge.

Global brands entering Asia often face three challenges simultaneously:

1. Understanding fragmented digital ecosystems

2. Localizing creative without diluting brand identity

3. Proving ROI quickly in unfamiliar markets

CREATIP’s approach aims to address all three, using performance data to inform creative decisions and localized storytelling to support conversion.

“Our Gold recognition as Independent Agency of the Year confirms that CREATIP has become a truly global marketing agency with strong influence across the Asian market,” said Deukil (Daniel) Kong, Founder and CEO of CREATIP.

“With our expansion from Japan to Taipei, China, we aim to become the most effective and reliable partner for global brands entering the Korean, Japanese, and broader APAC markets.”

What This Signals for the APAC Agency Landscape

CREATIP’s rise reflects a broader trend across Asia-Pacific marketing: independent agencies with deep local expertise are increasingly outcompeting global networks in performance-driven work.

As platforms, consumer behavior, and regulations diverge by market, brands are prioritizing partners that understand local dynamics—and can execute without layers of bureaucracy.

Winning Gold at AOY places CREATIP firmly in that category. It signals not just creative or performance excellence, but the operational maturity required to scale independently across borders.

For global brands looking to expand in Korea, Japan, or across APAC, CREATIP’s latest recognition reinforces what its clients are already betting on: local intelligence, data-driven execution, and a clear focus on measurable growth.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

AI claims, external validation still matters. In 2025, Akeneo collected a notable set of analyst awards, customer-review wins, and industry recognition that together point to a larger story: product information management (PIM) is becoming a growth lever, not just back-office plumbing.

The Product Experience (PX) company announced a sweep of recognitions across analyst firms, peer-reviewed platforms, and industry awards—highlighting its momentum as brands look to turn structured product data into measurable revenue impact.

At a time when product teams are under pressure to support omnichannel commerce, AI-powered discovery, and faster launches, Akeneo’s results suggest that execution—not just innovation—is separating leaders from the pack.

Why This Recognition Matters Now

PIM has quietly moved from a “nice-to-have” system to a foundational layer for commerce, marketplaces, and AI-driven shopping experiences. As retailers and manufacturers face fragmented channels, shrinking attention spans, and rising customer expectations, the quality and structure of product data increasingly determine conversion rates.

Akeneo’s 2025 recognition lands squarely in that context. The company isn’t being rewarded for vision alone—it’s being recognized by analysts and users for usability, governance, and real-world readiness at scale.

With more than 1,000 customers, including Jaguar Land Rover, Elemis, and Steelcase, Akeneo operates in environments where product complexity and brand consistency are non-negotiable.

Product Launch of the Year: AI Meets PIM

One of Akeneo’s most visible wins came from the Product Marketing Alliance, which named the company’s Akeneo Data Architect Agent (DAA) as Product Launch of the Year.

The award recognizes not only innovation, but measurable impact and execution—criteria that matter as AI features flood the market. The Data Architect Agent is designed to help teams structure, enrich, and govern product data more intelligently, using AI to reduce manual effort while improving consistency.

The recognition also highlighted the leadership of Virginie Blot, Senior Product Marketing leader at Akeneo, for driving the launch across strategy, positioning, and execution. In a category often dominated by flashy features, the award suggests Akeneo struck a balance between AI ambition and practical value.

Leading the Info-Tech SoftwareReviews Data Quadrant

Perhaps more telling than industry awards is how customers rate the platform when surveyed independently.

In the 2025 Info-Tech SoftwareReviews Data Quadrant, Akeneo Product Cloud emerged as the top-ranked PIM solution, based on feedback from 446 verified end users across 13 vendors. The platform earned an overall score of 8.6 out of 10, the highest in the report.

Notably, Akeneo also recorded a Net Emotional Footprint score of +84, with 87% of users reporting positive sentiment—a signal that satisfaction extends beyond feature checklists into day-to-day usability.

Standout metrics included:

• 82% satisfaction with product features

• 81% satisfaction with vendor capabilities

• 91% likelihood to recommend

Info-Tech’s methodology emphasizes real-world usage, evaluating platforms across master data management, digital asset management, syndication, integrations, workflows, and customization. In other words, this isn’t aspirational scoring—it reflects how tools perform under operational pressure.

Head-to-Head: Akeneo vs. Inriver

Info-Tech’s Head-to-Head comparison between Akeneo Product Cloud and Inriver PIM adds further context.

In the 2025 analysis, Akeneo outperformed Inriver across several critical dimensions:

• Usability: 90% vs. 70%

• User satisfaction with core features: 84% vs. 70%

• Stronger support for cross-team collaboration

The report cited Akeneo’s advantages in intuitive workflows, governance and approval management, omnichannel delivery, and ease of integration—areas that directly affect how quickly teams can operationalize product data across marketing, commerce, and merchandising.

As PIM platforms increasingly serve multiple stakeholders beyond IT, these factors are becoming decisive in buying decisions.

G2 Winter 2026: Enterprise Validation

Akeneo’s momentum also extended into peer-review platforms. In the G2 Winter 2026 Report, Akeneo Product Cloud earned the Leader (Enterprise) designation, reflecting strong performance across both customer satisfaction and market presence.

Additional G2 badges included:

• Easiest Admin, highlighting operational simplicity

• Users Love Us, awarded for sustained high ratings from verified users

While G2 badges are common across MarTech, the combination of enterprise leadership and ease-of-administration speaks to a platform that scales without adding operational drag—an ongoing concern for global brands managing thousands of SKUs.

The Broader Implication for Product Experience

Taken together, these recognitions point to a shift in how organizations evaluate PIM platforms.

It’s no longer enough to store product data. Platforms must enable:

• Faster product launches

• Consistent omnichannel experiences

• AI-readiness for search, discovery, and recommendations

• Collaboration across marketing, commerce, and operations

Akeneo’s positioning as a Product Experience platform—rather than a traditional PIM—aligns with this evolution. As AI-driven shopping assistants, marketplaces, and personalization engines depend on structured, trustworthy data, PIM is becoming strategic infrastructure.

“Our mission at Akeneo has always been to help brands turn product information into a strategic growth engine,” said Romain Fouache, CEO of Akeneo. “These wins confirm our ability to execute, with verified endorsements from our everyday customers.”

The Bottom Line

Awards alone don’t define market leadership—but consistency across analysts, customers, and peers often does.

Akeneo’s 2025 performance suggests it has moved beyond being a strong PIM option to becoming a benchmark for how product data supports modern commerce and marketing. As brands invest more heavily in AI-driven experiences, platforms that combine governance, usability, and scalability will likely define the next phase of MarTech infrastructure.

For Akeneo, the message from 2025 is clear: product information, when done right, is no longer just operational—it’s competitive.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Cvent has spent years owning the logistics and analytics behind enterprise events. Now it wants to own what happens after the event ends.

The meetings, events, and hospitality technology leader has acquired Goldcast, a fast-growing B2B video platform known for helping marketers turn webinars and virtual events into polished, on-brand video content. The deal signals a clear shift in how event platforms are evolving—from execution tools into full-funnel marketing engines.

For marketers under pressure to justify event ROI in a video-first buying landscape, the message is straightforward: events should no longer be one-and-done experiences. They should be reusable, measurable, and revenue-adjacent.

Why This Deal Matters Now

The acquisition lands at a moment when B2B buying journeys are increasingly asynchronous, digital, and content-driven. Webinars, virtual conferences, and hybrid events are still popular—but their real value often comes after the live session ends.

Goldcast built its reputation on solving that exact problem. Its platform uses AI to automatically generate video clips, summaries, captions, and recaps from live events, making it easier for marketing teams to distribute content across websites, email campaigns, social channels, and sales enablement tools.

By bringing Goldcast into its ecosystem, Cvent is effectively extending the lifespan of every event it powers. A single webinar can now fuel weeks—or months—of downstream content without requiring additional production work.

That’s a meaningful upgrade for Cvent’s roughly 30,000 customers, many of whom already rely on the platform for registration, attendee engagement, and performance analytics.

From Event Management to Content Infrastructure

Traditionally, event technology platforms have focused on planning, promotion, and measurement. Content creation has lived elsewhere—often split across video tools, social platforms, and marketing automation systems.

Cvent is betting that consolidation is the next competitive advantage.

With Goldcast integrated, marketers can:

• Run webinars and events inside the Cvent ecosystem

• Automatically generate short-form and long-form video assets

• Distribute those assets across marketing and sales channels

• Measure engagement using combined event and video analytics

The result is a tighter loop between events, content, and revenue—one that aligns with how modern B2B teams actually operate.

This also reflects a broader trend in MarTech: platforms are increasingly expected to do more than manage workflows. They’re being asked to produce outcomes.

Goldcast’s AI Advantage

Goldcast enters the deal with momentum. The company has earned recognition as one of North America’s fastest-growing technology firms, including a spot on Deloitte’s 2025 Technology Fast 500.

Its appeal lies in automation. Instead of asking teams to manually edit recordings or brief video vendors, Goldcast applies AI to identify key moments, generate captions, and package content in minutes. That speed matters in a market where relevance decays quickly and attention is scarce.

For Cvent customers, this means less friction between hosting an event and activating its content. For Cvent itself, it adds a differentiated layer of AI-driven value that competitors will have to respond to.

A Clear Play for Buyer Intent Data

Beyond content creation, the acquisition also strengthens Cvent’s data story.

By combining Cvent’s event insights—such as attendance, session engagement, and interaction data—with Goldcast’s video-level engagement metrics, marketers gain a clearer picture of buyer intent. Which clips are watched? Which topics resonate? Which accounts engage repeatedly?

That kind of signal is increasingly valuable as B2B teams move away from form fills and toward behavioral indicators of interest.

It also positions Cvent more competitively against platforms that are already blending content, engagement, and analytics into unified experiences.

What This Signals for the MarTech Market

The Cvent-Goldcast deal underscores several industry realities:

• Events are becoming media assets, not just experiences

• AI-driven repurposing is moving from “nice to have” to expected

• Marketing teams want fewer tools that do more, not sprawling stacks

Rivals in the event and webinar space will likely feel pressure to respond—either through partnerships, acquisitions, or accelerated product development. As video continues to dominate B2B content strategies, platforms that can’t support post-event activation risk becoming operational utilities rather than strategic systems.

Looking Ahead

Cvent CEO Reggie Aggarwal framed the acquisition as a bet on AI-driven video without losing sight of what makes events powerful in the first place: authentic human moments.

That balance—automation without losing trust—will determine how successful this integration becomes.

If executed well, the combination could redefine what marketers expect from event technology: not just smoother execution, but sustained impact across the entire customer journey.

For now, one thing is clear. In a video-first future, Cvent doesn’t just want to host the event. It wants to own the story that follows.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

New Jersey is making a deliberate play to become a serious AI gravity well. The New Jersey Artificial Intelligence Hub announced it will launch a dedicated AI Accelerator in early 2026, powered by global innovation heavyweight Plug and Play. The move is less about hype and more about infrastructure—connecting startups, researchers, and enterprises into a single pipeline designed to move AI ideas from lab bench to market faster.

At its core, the accelerator aims to remove friction. New Jersey–based AI startups and university-affiliated founders will get direct access to mentors, investors, and industry partners, while top-tier AI startups from outside the state will be actively recruited to build and scale locally. The program will run out of the NJ AI Hub’s 6,500-square-foot facility in West Windsor, anchoring AI development in a region already dense with research institutions and enterprise buyers.

Why This Matters Now

AI accelerators aren’t new—but timing and execution matter. As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, startups face a familiar bottleneck: access to compute, customers, and credible validation. New Jersey’s play is to bundle all three.

The AI Accelerator builds on a series of deliberate steps by the NJ AI Hub, including its recent designation as one of only two global sites to host Microsoft Discovery, an agentic AI and cloud platform aimed at accelerating scientific research. That puts New Jersey in rare company—and signals an intent to compete not just with regional peers, but with global AI clusters.

“This partnership with Plug and Play will unleash new technologies, foster powerful cross-sector collaborations, and speed AI innovations from concept to impact,” said Liat Krawczyk, executive director of the NJ AI Hub.

Plug and Play Brings the Global Network

Plug and Play’s role is the accelerant. The Silicon Valley–born innovation platform runs more than 60 innovation hubs across 25+ countries and connects over 100,000 startups with 550+ corporate partners. Its model is proven: structured cohorts, hands-on mentorship, enterprise pilots, and investor access—all tuned to help startups scale, not just pitch.

Michael Olmstead, Plug and Play’s CRO, is leading the expansion with the NJ AI Hub, positioning the program as a gateway between New Jersey’s research depth and Plug and Play’s global commercialization engine.

For founders, the offering goes beyond demo days. The accelerator will provide business model refinement, technical workshops, funding access, and curated introductions to enterprise partners—often the missing link for AI startups stuck between proof-of-concept and revenue.

Built Around New Jersey’s Industry Strengths

Unlike generic accelerators, this one is explicitly sector-driven. Cohorts will tap into New Jersey’s established strengths in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, financial services, energy, telecommunications, logistics, and smart infrastructure.

That focus matters. AI startups increasingly need real-world data, regulated environments, and industry partners willing to pilot solutions. New Jersey’s proximity to Fortune 500 companies, major hospital systems, and global manufacturers gives the accelerator a practical edge over more abstract innovation hubs.

Princeton University, a founding partner of the NJ AI Hub, sees the accelerator as a commercialization bridge for academic innovation. “This partnership will enable faculty and students to turn their novel ideas into successful products and companies,” said Princeton Provost Jennifer Rexford.

A Growing Public–Private AI Stack

The accelerator doesn’t exist in isolation. The NJ AI Hub itself was founded by Princeton University, the State of New Jersey, Microsoft, and CoreWeave—an unusually strong coalition spanning academia, government, hyperscale cloud, and AI infrastructure.

CoreWeave, founded in New Jersey, brings deep GPU infrastructure expertise at a moment when compute access can make or break an AI startup. Microsoft’s involvement, via TechSpark and the Discovery platform, adds enterprise credibility and cloud-scale tooling. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority provides policy alignment and economic incentives to keep innovation—and jobs—local.

“Innovation flourishes when talented people are empowered with mentors and programs that help unlock their full potential,” said Mike Egan, general manager of Microsoft TechSpark.

The Bigger Picture

States are increasingly competing not just on tax incentives, but on AI ecosystems. Texas is courting data centers. New York is leaning into fintech AI. California still dominates research and venture capital—but it’s expensive and crowded. New Jersey’s bet is that a tightly integrated accelerator, anchored by real industry demand and global networks, can punch above its weight.

If executed well, the NJ AI Hub Accelerator could become a model for regional AI development—one where startups don’t just build impressive models, but deploy them into regulated, revenue-generating environments.

Early next year will show whether New Jersey can turn that ambition into sustained momentum. The pieces are in place. Now comes the hard part: execution.

Get in touch with our MarTech Experts.

Legacy IVR systems have long been a bottleneck for healthcare organizations—rigid call flows, poor caller experiences, and change cycles that stretch into months. AudioCodes says it just proved that doesn’t have to be the case.

The communications software vendor announced that its Voca Conversational Interaction Center (Voca CIC), working with Go2Uno and global BPO Atento, completed a large-scale AI-powered Voice Agent and Conversational IVR modernization for a major healthcare organization in a matter of weeks—far faster than typical enterprise IVR projects of similar complexity.

For an industry where call volumes are massive, systems are fragmented, and downtime is not an option, the deployment serves as a real-world example of AI moving from experimentation to operational backbone.

From Legacy IVR to AI Voice Agents—Fast

According to AudioCodes, the project replaced multiple legacy IVR systems with a modern, AI-driven conversational IVR capable of supporting more than 500 concurrent voice agents. That scale alone would normally put the project into a multi-quarter timeline.

Instead, the joint team completed the rollout in roughly 30 days, a timeframe Atento says others estimated at three to six months.

The new setup supports complex voice networking, integrates multiple carriers, and introduces intelligent, AI-powered call routing—critical for healthcare environments where calls range from appointment scheduling to sensitive patient inquiries.

Why This Matters in Healthcare CX

Healthcare contact centers face a uniquely difficult mix of challenges:

• Extremely high call volumes

• Seasonal and event-driven spikes

• Strict reliability and compliance requirements

• A growing expectation for natural, conversational self-service

Traditional IVRs struggle under that weight. They’re expensive to modify, brittle when scaled, and often frustrate callers with rigid menu trees.

By contrast, AudioCodes’ Voca CIC platform uses conversational AI to interpret intent, route calls intelligently, and contain more interactions without human intervention—all while maintaining the resilience required for mission-critical environments.

Inside the Deployment: What Changed

The modernization effort wasn’t a simple overlay. AudioCodes, Go2Uno, and Atento reworked the organization’s voice infrastructure end to end:

• Complex call flows were redesigned to support conversational interactions rather than menu-driven logic

• Multiple carrier systems were integrated, reducing dependency on siloed networks

• AI-powered routing was implemented to improve containment and reduce handling times

• AudioCodes SBC infrastructure was deployed to ensure continuity and reliability across a highly complex environment

• Advanced reporting and analytics were added to give Atento and the healthcare organization real-time visibility into voice agent performance and customer behavior

The result is a platform that doesn’t just automate calls, but actively improves how patients and members move through the system.

Azure Conversational AI at Enterprise Scale

One notable detail: the deployment included a seamless integration of Azure Conversational AI, something Atento says is often underestimated in terms of effort.

“Go2Uno and AudioCodes accomplished in just 30 days what others projected would take three to six months,” said Gustavo Samaniego, Senior IT Service and Deliveries Manager at Atento. He highlighted the Azure integration as a particular challenge that was executed “flawlessly.”

That matters because many AI IVR projects stall at integration—especially when cloud AI services meet legacy telephony environments. This deployment suggests those barriers are becoming more manageable with the right architecture and partners.

Not a Pilot—Production AI at Scale

AudioCodes is keen to position this project as something more than a proof of concept.

“This is real AI in action,” said Gidi Adlersberg, Head of the Voca CIC Business Line at AudioCodes. “Not a pilot, not a demo—transforming complex operations quickly and improving customer experience where it truly matters.”

That distinction is important. While conversational AI has been widely marketed, many enterprises remain stuck in pilot mode, hesitant to deploy at scale due to reliability concerns. A 500-agent healthcare rollout challenges the notion that AI voice systems are still experimental.

The Business Impact: Efficiency and Resilience

Beyond speed, the deployment delivered tangible operational benefits:

• Improved call containment, reducing the load on live agents

• Shorter average handling times, improving efficiency

• Greater resiliency, with SBC-backed infrastructure ensuring continuity

• A scalable foundation for future AI-driven enhancements

For Atento, the project also created a reusable, future-ready platform that can support new clients and evolving use cases without rebuilding from scratch.

A Broader Trend: IVR Modernization Gets Practical

The announcement reflects a broader shift in enterprise CX: IVR modernization is no longer about incremental upgrades. It’s about replacing rigid systems with AI-native voice platforms that can adapt quickly.

What’s notable here is the emphasis on speed and predictability—two areas where AI projects often fall short. By delivering a complex healthcare deployment in weeks, AudioCodes and its partners are making a case that conversational IVR can now meet enterprise timelines and expectations.

Availability and Access

AudioCodes says Voca CIC is available as a 30-day free trial through its website, the Microsoft Marketplace, and the Microsoft Teams Store. New customers can spin up a conversational contact center with AI and omnichannel capabilities in minutes, including a free phone number for evaluation.

That low-friction entry point suggests AudioCodes is targeting both large enterprises and organizations earlier in their IVR modernization journey.

Bottom Line

Healthcare IVR projects are notorious for running long, going over budget, and underdelivering on experience. This deployment shows that with mature conversational AI, strong infrastructure, and the right partners, those assumptions may finally be outdated.

For AudioCodes, the win reinforces its position in AI-powered voice and contact center modernization. For the industry, it’s another signal that AI voice agents are moving decisively from promise to production.

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Malaysia is stepping onto the global AI infrastructure map—and GIBO Holdings wants to help lay the groundwork. The Nasdaq-listed company announced a strategic collaboration with E Total Technology Sdn Bhd to plan, site, and deploy next-generation AI compute centers across Malaysia, designed to handle the surging demand for large-scale AI training and inference.

The partnership signals more than a routine data center build-out. By anchoring the project around NVIDIA’s latest high-performance AI chips and GPU architectures, GIBO is targeting the kind of dense, high-throughput compute environments typically reserved for hyperscalers and top-tier research institutions.

Why This Is a Big Deal

AI ambition increasingly hinges on compute access. As enterprises push beyond pilots into production—training larger models, running inference at scale, and supporting real-time applications—regional shortages of advanced compute have become a bottleneck. Southeast Asia, in particular, has relied heavily on offshore infrastructure.

This project aims to change that. By building AI-first compute centers locally, GIBO and E Total Technology plan to provide enterprises, research institutions, and digital economy players with scalable, high-performance resources closer to home—reducing latency, improving data sovereignty, and increasing regional competitiveness.

E Total Technology Takes the Lead on the Ground

Under the collaboration, E Total Technology Sdn Bhd will act as the primary local execution partner, overseeing everything from site sourcing to regulatory approvals. Its remit includes:

• Identifying and evaluating sites suitable for AI compute and data center facilities

• Conducting technical, commercial, and operational feasibility studies

• Managing local coordination, compliance, and approvals

• Supporting infrastructure planning and deployment

That local expertise matters. AI data centers aren’t just power-hungry—they’re regulation-heavy. Land use, energy availability, cooling, and compliance all influence whether projects move fast or stall. E Total’s experience navigating Malaysia’s infrastructure and regulatory landscape could significantly shorten time-to-deployment.

NVIDIA-Class Hardware, Built for Scale

While specific SKUs weren’t disclosed, the compute centers are expected to deploy NVIDIA’s most advanced AI chips and GPU platforms, optimized for high-density workloads. That positions the facilities to support:

• Large-scale foundation model training

• Advanced inference pipelines

• Multi-industry AI applications spanning finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and logistics

The emphasis isn’t just raw performance. The architecture is designed for efficiency—delivering improved energy utilization and internationally competitive compute density, while allowing room to scale as AI workloads continue to grow.

A Play for Regional AI Leadership

As governments and enterprises race to secure AI capacity, compute infrastructure has become a strategic asset. Countries that can host reliable, high-performance AI platforms stand to attract investment, talent, and innovation ecosystems.

By introducing globally benchmarked AI compute infrastructure, the GIBO–E Total collaboration aims to strengthen Malaysia’s position as a regional AI compute hub in Asia-Pacific—complementing national digital economy initiatives and making the country more attractive to AI-driven businesses.

The partners say they will continue evaluating opportunities to expand capacity as demand grows. Given the trajectory of AI adoption, that expansion may come sooner rather than later.

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