Matt Turck (VC at FirstMark) joins the show to break down the most controversial MAD (Machine Learning, AI, and Data) Landscape yet. This year, the team "declared bankruptcy" and cut over 1,000 logos to better reflect the market reality: a "Cambrian explosion" of AI companies and a fierce "struggle and tension between the very large companies and the startups".

Matt discusses why incumbents are "absolutely not lazy" , which categories have "largely just gone away" (like Customer Data Platforms and Reverse ETL) , and what new categories (like AI Agents and Local AI) are emerging. We also cover his investment thesis in a world dominated by foundation models, the "very underestimated" European AI scene , and whether an AI could win a Nobel Prize by 2027.

https://www.mattturck.com/mad2025

Data Stacks have traditionally been comprised of all-in-one, monolithic solutions. Powerful, but often rigid, expensive, and slow to adapt. In this session, we’ll explore how a composable architecture flips that model on its head, giving teams the flexibility to integrate best-in-class tools, scale on demand, and move faster. We’ll walk through a practical use case comparing a traditional CDP with a composable approach, highlighting the trade-offs and the tangible benefits in agility, cost, and business impact.

Adam's presentation explores why modern data teams are turning their data warehouse into the core of a Composable Customer Data Platform.

Data Stacks have traditionally been comprised of all-in-one, monolithic solutions. Powerful, but often rigid, expensive, and slow to adapt. In this session, we’ll explore how a composable architecture flips that model on its head, giving teams the flexibility to integrate best-in-class tools, scale on demand, and move faster. We’ll walk through a practical use case comparing a traditional CDP with a composable approach, highlighting the trade-offs and the tangible benefits in agility, cost, and business impact.

Hoe zorg je dat marketing en data écht samenwerken? Bij Transavia bouwden we een Composable Customer Data Platform waarmee we sneller ML-gebaseerde personalisatie toepassen op website en app. In deze sessie delen we hoe deze aanpak helpt om flexibeler te werken, klantgerichter te acteren en de samenwerking tussen teams te versterken.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) promise better engagement, higher operational efficiency, and revenue growth by centralizing and streamlining access to customer data. However, consolidating sensitive information from a variety of sources creates complex challenges around data governance, security, and privacy. We’ve studied, built, and managed data protection strategies at some of the world’s biggest retailers. We’ll showcase business requirements, common architectural components, and best practices to deploy data protection solutions at scale, protecting billions of sensitive records across regions and countries. Learn how a data vault pattern with granular, policy-based access control and monitoring can improve organizational privacy posture and help meet regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, e-Privacy). Walk away with a clear framework to deploy such architecture and knowledge of real-world issues, performance optimizations, and design trade-offs

Adobe’s Real-Time Customer Data Platform relies on the identity graph to connect over 70 billion identities and deliver personalized experiences. This session will showcase how the platform leverages Databricks, Spark Streaming and Delta Lake, along with 25+ Databricks deployments across multiple regions and clouds — Azure & AWS — to process terabytes of data daily and handle over a million records per second. The talk will highlight the platform’s ability to scale, demonstrating a 10x increase in ingestion pipeline capacity to accommodate peak traffic during events like the Super Bowl. Attendees will learn about the technical strategies employed, including migrating from Flink to Spark Streaming, optimizing data deduplication, and implementing robust monitoring and anomaly detection. Discover how these optimizations enable Adobe to deliver real-time identity resolution at scale while ensuring compliance and privacy.

Bradesco Bank is one of the largest private banks in Latin America, with over 75 million customers and over 80 years of presence in FSI. In the digital business, velocity to react to customer interactions is crucial to succeed. In the legacy landscape, acquiring data points on interactions over digital and marketing channels was complex, costly and lacking integrity due to typical fragmentation of tools. With the new in-house Customer Data Platform powered by Databricks Intelligent Platform, it was possible to completely transform the data strategy around customer data. Using some key components such Uniform and Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines, it was possible to increase data integrity, reduce latency and processing time and, most importantly, boost personal productivity and business agility. Months of reprocessing, weeks of human labor and cumbersome and complex data integrations were dramatically simplified achieving significant operational efficiency.

XP is one of the largest financial institutions in Brazil– and they didn’t reach that scale by moving slowly. After getting inspired at Data + AI Summit in 2024, they sprang into action to overhaul their advertising strategy using their first-party data in Databricks. Just a year later, they’ve achieved remarkable success: they’ve unlocked $66 million in incremental revenue from advertising, with the same budget as before. In this session, XP will share the tactical steps they took to bring a first-party data and AI strategy to customer acquisition– including how they built predictive models for customer quality and connected Databricks to their ecosystem through Hightouch’s Composable CDP. If you’re supporting an advertising team or are looking for real strategies to take home from this conference that can transform your business: this session is for you.

Maximize the value of your company’s marketing efforts with Data Intelligence for Marketing. Databricks provides seamless, out-of-the-box integration with your ecosystem, empowering every marketer with self-serve insights. And with AI-driven CDP, you get a complete view of customers and campaigns.

This presentation outlines the evolution of our marketing data strategy, focusing on how we’ve built a strong foundation using the Databricks Lakehouse. We will explore key advancements across data ingestion, strategy, and insights, highlighting the transition from legacy systems to a more scalable and intelligent infrastructure. Through real-world applications, we will showcase how unified Customer 360 insights drive personalization, predictive analytics enhance campaign effectiveness, and GenAI optimizes content creation and marketing execution. Looking ahead, we will demonstrate the next phase of our CDP, the shift toward an end-user-first analytics model powered by AIBI, Genie and Matik, and the growing importance of clean rooms for secure data collaboration. This is just the beginning, and we are poised to unlock even greater capabilities in the future.

Accor, a world-leading hospitality group offering experiences across more than 110 countries in 5,500 properties, 10,000 food & beverage venues, wellness facilities or flexible workspaces, relies on its more than 45 hotel brands from luxury to economy and its most awarded traveler loyalty program to connect deeply with customers and increase their lifetime value. With a rich store of data centralized in Snowflake, the team set out to enable their marketing and business teams with a platform that would allow them to autonomously deliver hyper-personalized experiences and campaigns.

Join the session to learn about Accor’s CDP journey and how Hightouch, as their Composable CDP, helps them drive customer engagement, loyalty, and revenue.

Leveraging customer data is essential for improving customer experiences and creating competitive advantage. However, many organizations struggle with fragmented data infrastructure, limited flexibility, and high costs associated with traditional customer data platforms (CDPs).

In this fireside chat, Steven Collings, Data Platform Engineering Lead at Zoopla, and Eric Omwega, Chief Operating Officer at RudderStack, will discuss how Zoopla tackled these challenges by adopting a warehouse-native approach to customer data with RudderStack.

Steven will share insights into Zoopla's journey, including:

• The challenges that prompted Zoopla's switch from Segment to RudderStack
• How RudderStack enabled Zoopla to regain control over their data while leveraging existing infrastructure investments
• The importance of flexibility and control in a customer data platform
• Zoopla's innovative use cases for customer data, including website personalization, email marketing, and advertising
• Future plans for advanced data applications, including building an identity graph, anonymous user personalization, and AI-driven recommendations

Discover the power of 1st party data + Customer Data Platforms. Unify customer data, enhance marketing value, safeguard competitive edge.

This session will explore why everyone is always banging on about the importance of 1st party data by continuing to bang on about the importance of 1st party data. Join us to learn how you can harness the full potential of your 1st party data by bringing all your customer data together in one unified view with a Customer Data Platform. Gain insights on how to enhance the value of your marketing efforts and drive superior business outcomes. Discover the surprising amount of readily available data about individual customers and how to identify, isolate, and protect your 1st party data. Don’t miss this opportunity to unlock the power of your 1st party data with CDPs and safeguard your company's largest competitive advantage.

GDPR and EU AI Act impact on creative data use. Learn best practices in data governance + AI for customer relationship success with a CDP.

How do GDPR and the EU AI Act impact creative data use? The author of 'How to Use Customer Data' and Acxiom’s European Privacy Officer shares her insight into best data governance practices for building great customer relationships using a CDP to create an effective data-driven business.

The topics will include:

Embracing the 'personalization paradox' and its benefits for marketing data scientists.

Devising GDPR-powered data use strategies to empower both customers and brands along the way.

Tips for data scientists to kick start with AI governance

According to a recent EY survey, 53% of Retail & CPG executives rank changing consumer preferences as a top pressure, even above profitability and margin concerns. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are vital in this scenario, enabling brands to understand, predict customer needs and offer hyper personalized experiences. Despite the recent surge in CDP investments, many marketers still grapple with achieving meaningful ROI. In this session, we will demonstrate through live examples how to extract actionable insights from your CDP, prioritize efforts, and drive actions to boost your marketing ROI.