After a wave of consolidation over the previous 6 years, more than a couple of martech minds wondered if the CDP was a better idea than it was an item.

Suppliers around the electronic experience area, specifically, were purchasing up CDPs, and in many cases it was due to the fact that both suppliers and their products were typically made use of in tandem by consumers anyway. Why not integrate pressures after that?

If you were in the martech room in any way, you bear in mind those days. Twilio acquired Sector; SAP got Emarsys; Contentstack bought Lytics; Uniphore bought ActionIQ, to call simply a couple of.

These weren’t heritage systems. They were CDPs constructed for an information trouble. They were established to gather and merge client information and accounts, construct target markets, and turn on campaigns. Their strengths remained in identity resolution and consumer account unification.

Recently, Hightouch published an article regarding its vision for an agentic CDP Someday later, Databricks announced CustomerLake, its agentic CDP

The concepts Hightouch and Databricks are talking about have a great deal in common. Yet at a high level, what they’re saying is this: the future isn’t customer accounts, it’s customer decisions.

Your consumers browse anywhere. See to it your brand programs up

The SEO toolkit you recognize, plus the AI presence data you need.

Begin Free Test

Get started with

The agentic vision of CDP 3.0

If unifying consumer profiles was CDP 1.0, composability was CDP 2.0, and the agentic CDP is CDP 3.0, and it includes unified consumer data + AI decisioning + autonomous implementation.

While CDP 1.0 saw information as the problem that needed to be addressed, you can say that CDP 3.0 sees humans as the blocker. We’re too slow to evaluate data and make decisions. AI representatives, on the various other hand, relocation quickly and continuously.

As Forrester VP, Principal Expert Joe Stanhope created :

“Agentic AI supplies the path to not only apply brand-new abilities that expand the CDP’s remit yet also create a brand-new paradigm for generating insights, targeting audiences, decisioning, and orchestrating customer trips.”

Who’s going to own the agentic layer and where will it live?

Where Hightouch and Databricks split is in their ideologies concerning just how every one of this plays out.

As Hightouch’s Tejas Manihar and Alex Haase wrote :

“5 years back, we assumed we were building a better CDP design. Actually, we were developing the foundation for smart representatives. By moving audiences, trips, and activation onto the stockroom, the Composable CDP attached advertising and marketing straight to a business’s wealthiest customer and organization context.”

The Hightouch vision is for agents to do their operate in the data storehouse, without copying data. That’s true to the firm’s origins in composability and it likewise adds an agentic layer to the discussion. For Hightouch, the agentic layer in CDP 3.0 sits in a marketing system in addition to the data platform.

Databricks’ CustomerLake is an instance of the firm’s philosophy that information storage facilities– in this situation Databricks’ data lakehouse technology– can function as the application platform. Databricks already did this with business protection when it released Lakewatch in March 2026 With CustomerLake, it’s bringing that viewpoint to marketing. (It’s worth noting CustomerLake can consume information from resources beyond the information lakehouse.)

Databricks sees an advantage to constructing your CDP on the information system due to the fact that your governance, AI, and enterprise context are already there. Don’t copy it, don’t move it, simply do the work there.

Is the CDP globe wide sufficient for both designs?

In the beginning glimpse from here in the low-cost seats, it looks like Hightouch and Databricks get on a clash. Let’s deposited for a moment various other gamers that will delve into the CDP 3.0 area as it grows. ( BlueConic’s procurement recently of Blueshift has a comparable tale about adding AI agents and actions to consumer information.)

In truth, Hightouch and Databricks can co-exist because they have a tendency to target various organizations.

For Databricks, which is selling a data platform, the key purchaser is typically data, AI, and platform teams on the tech side. Hightouch offers more frequently to CRM, advertising and marketing, and lifecycle groups.

That means each vendor frequently has a various starting point in their possibility organizations. For Hightouch there’s an existing data storehouse for its item to sit on top of and an existing martech stack in place. For Databricks, there’s an existing lakehouse and an enterprise-wide AI strategy in position.

Because Databricks is operating at the venture degree, it’s trying to find customers with information design and AI maturity. Hightouch is trying to find advertising and marketing procedures maturation.

The enterprise emphasis of Databricks suggests the moment to value is potentially longer than it is for Hightouch clients.

However these substantial distinctions indicate the two business will commonly be angling in different ponds. Hightouch will interest large DTC players, customer financial solutions, retailers, subscription businesses, and travel and hospitality companies where the CMO will likely contribute in the choice.

Databricks, on the various other hand, will certainly locate itself talking to worldwide monetary services companies, telecommunications, huge medical care systems, and big business with a central information organization where the CIO will likely be greatly involved.

Simply put, it’s unlikely either method victories. Each approach can be a champion for the best customer.

The most effective we can hope for is these systems provide on their pledges and marketing experts and their clients both win.