Awaking the Sleeping Giant: Global Corporations Enter the Data Market
Awaking the Sleeping Giant: Global Corporations Enter the Data Market
It has long been prophesized that the day of the corporate data vendor was near. What first began as whispers quickly transformed into a hum. We can now clearly hear the drumbeat of the coming hordes. But is the world ready?
Chief Data Officers have long dreamed of how to show their value to the organization. It was all about how much money they’ve saved or how much efficiency they’ve created. For the lucky few, they could directly point to tangible revenue growth for the organization, powered by data. Now CDOs are waking up to articles about $60M paid to Reddit annually for a single data license and a $100M 3-year deal being paid to the New York Times. Wait what? This is no longer a sideshow. This is meaningful, high profit-margin revenue. CDOs now have the full attention of the C Suite.
These early large deals are reminiscent of the first few gold discoveries that fueled the California gold rush of the mid 1800s and the first significant oil discoveries in the US around the same time. Show people a few examples of getting rich quickly, and others will rush to replicate that success. AI is dominating the news cycle, and underlying it is the insatiable hunger for data. These powerful models need to be fed a constant stream of data. They are demanding and they want more. The more types of models being built, the more types of data will be needed. Even the most obscure data offers the potential of significant spoils when sold to the right needy buyer.