Zuora to Acquire Sub(x), Accelerating Subscriber Acquisition and Retention with New AI Capabilities for the Media Industry

Zuora, a leading monetization suite for modern business, announced its planned acquisition of Sub(x), an AI solution for digital publishing and media companies. With this acquisition, Sub(x) will transform Zuora’s existing paywall offering into an AI-powered paywall solution to gain deeper insights into subscriber behavior, constantly optimizing how offers are presented to maximize acquisition and retention.

“Publishers need the ability to drive speed over rigid planning, power data-driven decisions at scale and achieve continuous improvement over static goals for rapidly changing audience behaviors”

Today’s competitive media landscape and changing market dynamics have increased pressure to effectively monetize and accelerate revenue growth. This requires more dynamic systems and technology that can continuously adapt pricing and packaging strategies at scale. A legacy method, such as propensity scoring, is static and does not update unless rerun with new data, which can hinder agility. Launching new offers and pricing changes, introducing new payment methods or creating new bundles can take days or even weeks, which can lead to missed opportunities and lost revenue.

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Sub(x)’s AI uses reinforcement learning powered by first-party data that enables companies to optimize conversion without the need for manual testing and experimentation. This can reduce the time and costs associated with this type of activity by up to 90%. By continuously learning and adapting its strategies based on specific user interactions of a company’s unique audience, Sub(x) dynamically adjusts access and recommendations based on changing subscriber actions. Sub(x) also leverages AI without losing transparency, enabling customers to discover valuable audience patterns, and better understand which offerings are driving subscription revenue and conversions by customer behavior.

“Sub(x) adds a cutting-edge AI layer to Zuora, empowering our customers to constantly learn, present the right offers and continue to engage subscribers as preferences change over time,” said Tien Tzuo, Founder and CEO at Zuora. “Welcoming Sub(x) to the Zuora team immediately expands our holistic solution for media companies, while accelerating the pace of our AI innovation across Zuora’s monetization suite.”

“Publishers need the ability to drive speed over rigid planning, power data-driven decisions at scale and achieve continuous improvement over static goals for rapidly changing audience behaviors,” said Jonathan Harris, Founder and CEO at Sub(x). “Joining Zuora will give companies new agility to harness AI and monetize across their business.”

Zuora provides a comprehensive solution for the media industry to enable Total Monetization through a dynamic mix of revenue, pricing and packaging models, informed by first-party data. Its intelligent paywall and subscriber insight dashboards help maximize revenue and retention, while a low-code rules builder and agile product catalog allows companies to quickly create and deploy subscription offers without relying on developer resources or data teams. Additionally, Zuora enhances the customer experience and helps to reduce churn through AI-driven smart payment retries, a self-service subscription portal to update personal billing details and make amendments, over 45 payment methods and robust fraud protection.

Sub(x) is an established Zuora partner with an integrated solution in use by joint customers. After closing, Sub(x) will be available as a Zephr module within the Zuora product suite.

The acquisition of Sub(x) is expected to close by Zuora’s third quarter fiscal 2025 subject to customary approvals and closing conditions. Foros is acting as financial advisor and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP as legal advisor to Zuora. Gerald Edelman LLP is acting as financial advisor and Simons Muirhead Burton LLP as legal advisor to Sub(x).