Chord acquires Zenlytic to build an enterprise AI platform

Chord expands from commerce into the enterprise market

New York-based Chord, which describes itself as an AI-powered data platform built for commerce companies, announced the acquisition of Zenlytic on November 3. Zenlytic developed an AI-powered business intelligence platform designed to use data stored in enterprise data warehouses.

Chord said the deal doubled its revenue and added a customer portfolio that includes Verizon, J.Crew, Domino's and Stanley Black & Decker. With the transaction, Chord is targeting a broader enterprise market beyond commerce brands.

According to the announcement, the two companies were addressing the same problem: how to make AI reliable when using enterprise data. Chord built an end-to-end context layer for commerce brands, while Zenlytic developed an approach that can be used across industries, relying on existing enterprise data warehouses.

Platform promises shared business definitions and oversight

Chord said that access to data alone does not guarantee that AI agents will understand how a business operates. As definitions, metrics and financial goals change, agents may produce different answers from the same data, leaving teams to spend time checking the results.

Chord offers a shared, governed business interpretation layer that, the company claims, keeps pace with changes in the business. The system maintains business context and verified metrics, applies existing permissions, validates queries and gives data teams visibility into AI agents' activities.

The platform works with companies' existing data warehouses. According to Chord, it turns questions asked in natural language into reliable answers and enables agents to carry out actions through business channels.

Zenlytic's technology and team join Chord

Zenlytic's technology and key employees will join Chord as part of the acquisition. The company said this will accelerate their shared goal of helping more businesses deploy and expand AI across their organizations.

“We built Zenlytic so companies could get reliable answers from their own data, using a developer-centric approach to maintain the accuracy of enterprise context,” Ryan Janssen, Zenlytic's CEO, said in the announcement. He added that the deal combines the analytics engine with Chord's data infrastructure and activation capabilities, allowing customers to move from asking questions to taking action based on the answers.

Chord was founded in 2021 and operates in New York. Co-founder and CEO Bryan Mahoney said companies need to retain control over their unique business knowledge while using AI with the models they choose.