Hightouch Taps AI Luminary Akilesh Bapu to Accelerate Push into Context-Aware Marketing Agents

Every conversation I'm having right now with vendors, agencies, and enterprises is squarely focused on agentic AI. 

Without question, it represents a game-changing initiative for organizations as they look to transform their operations – and prepare for the promise of the agent-to-agent ecosystem.

While I've been steadily tracking the evolution of digital experience platforms and their customer data layers, I've also been paying close attention to the pure-play CDPs and data platforms, each of which is leveraging its composable position and innovating in unique ways. As the data warehouse takes on an even more strategic role in the AI landscape, we're seeing more transformation – and faster. 

That's certainly been the case with Hightouch, a composable CDP and AI decisioning platform that's keenly focused on activating data warehouses to power personalized marketing. They've been aggressively solving some of the key operational challenges within the data channel, adding AI-Powered Adaptive Identity Resolution to its CDP, and even partnering with Narrative I/O and Snowflake to provide multi-vendor identity resolution and activation.

Hightouch is definitely blazing its own trail, ignited by an $80 million Series C that closed earlier this year. While AI decisioning continues to be a key emphasis (and a category we're following with several other vendors), the company is driving its position as a data and AI agent platform for marketers. 

With agentic AI exploding at the seams – and the potential for extending agents beyond vendor ecosystems – it's clear that Hightouch is making a strong play as it telegraphs its differentiated value in this area. Now, it's adding the right talent to lead the charge by bringing an AI heavy hitter to its ranks. 

Announced today, Akilesh Bapu, co-founder and former CEO of DeepScribe, has joined Hightouch as Head of AI Product Development. Bapu will lead the company’s AI product strategy, focusing on the development of autonomous, context-aware marketing agents that leverage Hightouch’s Composable CDP foundation.

Adding an AI luminary to the team

AI talent acquisition is fast becoming a key strategy for organizations, with leading tech brands like Meta and OpenAI spending hundreds of millions on human capital to drive their strategies. Successful experience and demonstrable outcomes are key fixtures on the resumes of many candidates entering these roles, which makes the playing field much tighter – and incredibly competitive. 

Bapu is a rare gem in the AI talent pool. His technology credentials certainly put him at the top of the ladder, but they're bolstered by his proven business acumen. During his tenure at DeepScribe, he helped pioneer a medical AI solution that provides ambient clinical documentation by listening to patient-provider conversations in real time. Based on the input, DeepScribe automatically generates accurate medical notes that integrate into electronic health records, helping doctors save time and focus more on patient care.

It's clear that governance, compliance, and trust were key considerations for Bapu and his team at DeepScribe. The sensitivity to a highly regulated intersection of AI and healthcare data has equipped him with the added muscle for managing risk relative to data privacy. No small task.

As CEO, he also successfully built DeepScribe's growth strategy, leading multiple funding rounds and scaling the business through partnerships with major health systems. His work has established him as one of the foremost executives in applied AI, and he sees ample opportunity for leveraging his experience with Hightouch.

A graduate of the esteemed UC Berkeley College of Engineering, Bapu was previously an NLP research scientist at Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research, where he focused on deep learning. He even has some Apple DNA in his work history. He is also a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree. 

Powering context-aware marketing agents

As we know in the CMS category, context is now driving the AI horizon. The same is true for CDP, where marketing presents a uniquely powerful domain for agentic AI. This is due to its closed-loop posture, which supports workflows that are fully autonomous and continuously optimized against enterprise data. 

Context-aware marketing agents are intelligent systems. They use AI to collect and interpret real-time data about a customer's behaviors, or "context," to deliver highly personalized and relevant marketing actions. Unlike traditional chatbots that use predefined scripts, these agents can adapt their behavior by remembering past interactions, analyzing user intent, and integrating data from various sources. 

CDPs (at least the best ones) are designed with scale as a cornerstone. With integrations across leading data platforms – including Snowflake, Databricks, and Google – Hightouch is positioned to bring its enterprise-grade context to agentic reasoning, and do it at incredible scale. This could provide significant value to brands that are banking on agentic strategies to help drive the future of their personalized marketing by leveraging unfettered access to data. 

“As foundation models rapidly commoditize, the real breakthroughs will emerge at the application layer,” said Bapu. “Hightouch’s combination of deep enterprise data access and agentic reasoning creates the conditions for AI marketing agents that not only assist, but truly operate autonomously to drive measurable outcomes.”

Why it matters

Hightouch is already setting a high bar in the pure-play CDP category. They are reimaging their place in the space with a compelling vision for AI and how agents can be harnessed across the data landscape. 

As a composable solution, Hightouch is uniquely positioned with the modularity and flexibility to accelerate innovation as enterprises push into new areas with agentic AI. Now, with a proven talent like Bapu shaping its AI product strategy, the company has assembled a dynamic foundation to challenge the market with its differentiated value.

Context-aware marketing agents represent an evolutionary step in AI-powered agentic capabilities. They're a big part of this story, providing a continuous cycle of perceiving, analyzing, and acting that can elevate hyper-personalized marketing strategies in compelling ways. 

With the increased efficiency and scale, brands can harness these agents to make smarter, faster decisions while tapping autonomous workflows that are continuously optimized against enterprise data. By investing in a visionary roadmap for their applications, Hightouch can pull further ahead – and lay the framework for future capabilities. 

Hightouch is also being steered by a young, brilliant, and fiery leadership team that's focused on disruption. Bapu is cut from the same cloth, and the combined resources could deliver a powerhouse braintrust for new ideas that are accelerated by an AI-centric posture. And bringing in a talent at Bapu's level is sending a strong signal to the market about their overall confidence.

“Akilesh’s track record of building transformative AI products and his conviction around the future of agentic workflows make him an extraordinary addition to the team,” said Tejas Manohar, co-founder and CEO of Hightouch. “Together, we’re building the most advanced AI marketing agents in the industry.”

Data is at the center of everything. To compete, modern brands need this kind of forward-thinking technology in their composable stacks to power what's next in the agentic race – and Hightouch just leveled up. While the roadmap has arguably been amplified with Bapu's addition, you should still focus your evaluation on core capabilities relative to your goals and consider the pricing model based on your anticipated scale. But Hightouch should be on your short list. 

Looking for guidance on Hightouch? Talk to an expert.

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