Latest report shows architectural divergence driven by AI adoption, data governance, and deployment models

The Customer Data Alliance (CDA) and the Customer Data Platform Institute released the 18th edition of the CDP Industry Update, continuing their long-running, semi-annual analysis of the global Customer Data Platform (CDP) market.

Covering the period from June 30 through December 31, 2025, the Update shows a market that continues to expand while becoming more structurally differentiated. As AI-enabled capabilities proliferate and CDP functionality is increasingly embedded in marketing platforms, enterprises are making clearer architectural choices about where customer data is governed, how it is deployed, and which systems are trusted to support AI use cases at scale.

The data shows that AI is not collapsing the CDP category or accelerating consolidation. Instead, it is reinforcing the separation between integrated CDP platforms and warehouse-native customer data architectures.

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“What’s changing isn’t whether CDPs matter, it’s where responsibility for customer context sits,” said Chris Adelman, CEO of the Customer Data Alliance. “Some organizations are centralizing that responsibility inside integrated platforms, while others are anchoring it in their data infrastructure. The market is supporting both.”

Key observations from the Update

• Delivery-oriented CDPs were the fastest-growing category, with 3.3% growth, reflecting continued demand for AI-enabled decisioning, orchestration, and campaign delivery capabilities within a single vendor environment.
• Composable, or warehouse-native, CDP vendors recorded 7.8% organic employment growth, nearly six times the industry average of 1.3%. This growth reflects a sustained shift of core customer data services into enterprise cloud data warehouses, where data is governed and reused across marketing, analytics, and operations.

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• Integrated CDPs now account for a dominant share of employment and funding, reflecting the continued embedding of CDP capabilities within broader software platforms rather than standalone products.
• Market concentration remains high and stable. A small group of large vendors continues to account for 67% of CDP employment and 73% of total funding, levels that have remained consistent across recent updates, indicating durable scale advantages rather than a winner-take-all dynamic.