TikTok US, AI GTM Summit, Salesforce Acquisitions, Zoominfo Lawsuit
Hey everyone, Pranav and Austin here. We finally hit Episode 10 of GTMN, and it was a huge milestone for us—not just because we hit double digits before the end of the year, but because we welcomed our very first guest to the show: Brendan Short from The Signal. We covered a massive amount of ground, from the official word on TikTok’s future to the latest legal drama in the B2B world.
Here’s the breakdown of what went down.
The TikTok Deal: It’s Official
The big breaking news is that TikTok’s US entity is being sold to a joint venture controlled by American investors. According to a memo from CEO Shou Zi Chew, this new venture will operate as an independent entity with full authority over U.S. data protection, content moderation, and—crucially—algorithm security.
While it seems like they are keeping the core algorithm, the “security” of it will now be overseen by this US entity. We’re still a bit skeptical about how much the product will actually change, but for multinational advertisers, life is about to get a lot more complicated with potentially separate ad managers for the U.S. and the rest of the world.
"Just a way for a handful of investors to get really rich" - Austin!
Consolidation Season: Salesforce, Cvent, and Pinterest
The acquisition market is heating up, especially in the AI and event space:
Salesforce acquired Qualified: On December 17, 2025, Salesforce signed a deal to buy Qualified, the AI sales engagement platform. Their core product, Piper (an AI SDR agent), is designed to automate the early funnel by engaging visitors and booking meetings. It makes sense given Salesforce’s aggressive AI strategy; they’ve already made ten acquisitions this year as they try to package AI “jobs to be done” across their suite.
"I think if you're not building—if you haven't started in the last few years—it's pretty hard to argue that you're like actually AI native" - Brendan
Cvent acquired Goldcast: Cvent, the heavyweight in event marketing, picked up the AI-video platform Goldcast. While terms weren’t official, reports suggest Cvent paid just under $300M in cash—an incredible outcome for a team that only raised about $40M.
Pinterest acquired tvScientific: This isn’t about “Pinterest TV” as a streaming service; it’s a performance ad tech play. Pinterest is using tvScientific’s engine to connect its intent-rich first-party signals to real business outcomes like site visits and purchases, allowing advertisers to run outcome-based TV campaigns.
The Lawsuit: ZoomInfo vs. Apollo
In a move that’s definitely providing some B2B tea, ZoomInfo is suing Apollo. ZoomInfo claims they own the patents on the “core mechanics” of how modern sales platforms operate. The patents in question cover everything from web crawling for B2B data and using ML classifiers to categorize pages to generating lookalike account recommendations based on intent signals.
Apollo tried to get the case thrown out, arguing that you can’t patent “collecting and analyzing data on a computer,” but the judge ruled that because ZoomInfo claims a “novel technical improvement,” the case is headed to trial. Honestly, it’s hard to see how a “feature matrix” can be proprietary, and if ZoomInfo wins, it might mean IP law has gone completely off the rails.
"It makes no sense... you can’t have patents on this stuff. If ZoomInfo wins, it shows IP law has gone completely haywire" - Pranav
Key Takeaways from the AI GTM Summit
Brendan joined us fresh off hosting the AI GTM Summit, which had over 600 registrants and 300 live attendees. Two big trends emerged:
1. CRM Sorting: The “no-brainer” move right now is sorting the world into your CRM using AI. Instead of using virtual assistants for research, teams are building AI workflows to enrich accounts with specific data points—like how many products an e-commerce site sells—and automatically tiering them as high or low fit.
2. In-House Agents: The “bleeding edge” is teams building their own in-house agents using tools like Claude Code or Cursor. As data becomes commoditized, the “secret sauce” shifts to what you do with that data and how you orchestrate custom tool calls.
"As we get into this world where like data becomes more and more commoditized, what you do with the data actually becomes the secret sauce" - Brendan
The Rise of ChatGPT Apps
The feed was absolutely full of “app” announcements from the likes of Clay, Hex, Figma, and Adobe. Adobe’s ad was slick, showing how you can use Photoshop Express inside ChatPT, but we’re questioning if users actually want to do manual edits there.
The real “bull case” for these apps is context. ChatGPT has a “memory” of who you are and what you’re working on. When you use a Clay app inside ChatGPT, it can marry your global business context with a specific tool call—something a standard Google Sheet just can’t do.
The big lesson from Episode 10? In this new era, the most powerful tool isn’t just the AI itself—it’s the operator who knows how to point it. As Austin put it, the number one thing you can do for your career is “go take a programming class... because you can literally just like talk to Cursor and it will code for you”.
Think of AI like a universal remote for your business; the remote is powerful, but it’s only as effective as the person who knows which buttons to press to make the whole house come alive.
Happy holidays everyone, and we’ll see you in January!