Salesforce agreed to buy Listen Labs, a startup whose AI agents interview real customers over audio and video and turn the conversations into research reports in days. TechCrunch reported a price near $2 billion, about 65 times Listen Labs’ annual revenue.
A week later, HubSpot said it would cut about 660 jobs, roughly 7% of its staff, to reorganize around “AI-powered customer outcomes.” CEO Yamini Rangan said AI isn’t replacing those workers.
Customer research used to sit outside the marketing stack, run by consulting firms and agencies and delivered as a ppt deck. Both companies are now betting the customer relationship runs with fewer people in the middle.
This was originally posted as a New Arrival in Thinking in Generations · The Catalog · №009, an issue of my weekly newsletter The Catalog. You can Subscribe for weekly insights, or get in touch to talk about what this means for your business.