Intercom

Trust Must Drive Your Data Strategy

In a MarTech contributed essay published June 24, 2026, Jay Mandel argues that the advertising and data economy is built on an extraction-first architecture that treats people as raw material rather than participants. He contends technical fixes (cleanrooms, CDPs, brokers) cannot fully address the problem because the foundational incentives prioritize signal extraction over human understanding. Mandel outlines harms from 'dirty data'—price discrimination, biased hiring automation, malicious health advertising, and predatory financial targeting—and cites legal scholar Cass Sunstein to distinguish legitimate influence from algorithmic manipulation. He advocates shifting toward transparency, specific consent, clear chain-of-custody and a 'clean data' model in which people can verify and control their data, claiming this approach yields better compliance, lower breach liability, and durable trust.

Cursor Sells to SpaceX; Multi‑Model AI Momentum Surges

The newsletter reports Cursor's sale to SpaceX for $60 billion and uses the deal to illustrate broader trends: intelligence is becoming abundant, model quality is converging, and value is accruing to companies that own workflows, data and customer relationships. The piece highlights recent technical milestones and market moves: Chinese open‑weights model GLM‑5.2 (Z.ai) posting strong benchmarks, Microsoft fine‑tuning a model called DeepSeek for Copilot Cowork, Baseten finalizing a roughly $1.5 billion fundraising round at $11–13 billion valuations, and Databricks acquiring Panther for $1.4 billion. The author argues startups that capture workflow/data can post‑train models and spin large flywheels, accelerating multi‑model adoption across enterprises.

Salesforce Acquires Fin for $3.6B

Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fin — the company formerly known as Intercom — for approximately $3.6 billion. Fin provides an AI customer-agent platform that resolves complex support queries across channels including live chat, email, WhatsApp, SMS, phone and Slack; its proprietary model is called Apex. The acquisition follows Intercom’s rebrand to Fin one month earlier and is expected to close in Salesforce’s fiscal Q4 2027. Salesforce said Fin’s packaged offerings and proprietary models will complement its Agentforce platform and provide faster time-to-value deployment options for SMB and commercial customers. The deal is Salesforce’s fifth announced acquisition in 2026 and third in June. (This record duplicates an existing signal that also reported leadership continuity and post-close operational plans.)