The AI Edge Podcast · 2026-05-11 · 49 min
The MarTech landscape just flatlined for the first time in 15 years. Not because AI killed it - but because the companies that were always going to lose finally ran out of time. Meanwhile, marketers are building software without knowing they're building software, SaaS platforms are going headless, and the new constraint isn't data or budget or creative. It's context. This week, Shiv and Miles sit down with Scott Brinker - aka Chief MarTech, founder of the Chief MarTech blog, former HubSpot ecosystem lead, and the person who has been tracking the MarTech landscape since it had 150 companies on it. Scott just dropped his annual State of MarTech report - 125 pages, a decade and a half of pattern recognition, and one central thesis: we are in the chrysalis stage. Things have dissolved. The butterfly hasn't formed yet. And anyone who tells you they've figured it all out is lying. Scott breaks down why peak MarTech finally arrived - and why the companies exiting aren't the AI wrappers everyone expected but the legacy 2010s players that never won their categories and have been on life support for years.
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