AI just explained CDPs better than we ever did

The customer data platform (CDP) market has always been … confusing. Hundreds of vendors, from giants like Salesforce to warehouse-native players like RudderStack, all claiming to unify customer data. If you’re a buyer, it’s hard to even know where to start. What problem are you actually solving?

So I decided to ask AI for help.

How AI categorized the CDP world

I gave ChatGPT a simple task: “Categorize CDP use cases into just two groups.”

Two is an arbitrary number, of course, but that’s the point. Forcing a small number of categories (two or three) forces clarity. It highlights contrasts and makes the complexity digestible. There’s a reason why every consulting framework seems to have three boxes or two arrows: Humans understand better when there are fewer buckets.

What came back was surprisingly insightful. Here's a screenshot:

ChatGPT response for categorizing Amazon search for men's shoes

As someone who has spent years building in this space, I found its classification spot-on. The model cut through layers of vendor marketing fluff and arrived at the two fundamental reasons anyone buys a CDP.

AI didn’t just explain the space. It clarified it.

Shoes, AI, and too many options

Then I tried something fun. I asked the same question, but this time about men’s shoes on Amazon.

Every time I search on Amazon--in this case, for shoes--I’m bombarded with hundreds of options. It’s like walking into an infinite shoe store. Even Amazon’s categorization is overwhelming and feels unintuitive to me.

So I fired up ChatGPT’s new Atlas browser and said: “Group men’s shoes into three meaningful categories.” This was the output:

ChatGPT response to Amazon query

I’m not a footwear expert, but the output made total sense to me as a consumer.

Three clean, intuitive categories that captured all the variations I cared about—suddenly, the chaos had structure.

And then it hit me: This is exactly what AI can do across every that’s domain drowning in options.

AI brings structure to complexity

Whether you’re scrolling through restaurants in New York City or browsing shoes on Amazon, abundance can be paralyzing.

AI changes that. It can distill hundreds of options into a few clear mental models, tailored to your context and preferences.

This is more than convenient. It’s cognitive compression. AI isn’t just helping us choose faster; it’s helping us understand better.

What smart vendors will do next

For companies selling complex products in crowded categories, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.

AI will increasingly become the layer that translates your offering to buyers. Instead of slogging through your website or analyst reports, they’ll just ask an AI assistant: “What kind of CDP do I need?”

And the answer won’t come from your marketing team. It’ll come from how well your product fits into the mental models the AI has learned from the entire ecosystem.

So, as vendors, we should care less about shouting louder, and more about defining our category clearly enough that AI (and therefore customers) can explain it effortlessly.