Insider One, a customer engagement software company, acquired Bluecore, a New York retail marketing technology company, on May 13, 2026. The two companies announced the deal in a press release distributed through PR Newswire. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Bluecore sells marketing software to more than 400 US enterprise brands, among them ALO Yoga, J.Crew, Sephora, Bloomingdale's, The North Face, Ralph Lauren, QVC and Michael Kors. Insider One said the purchase would add to its retail data infrastructure and its ability to identify shoppers, and would speed up its growth in North America.
Bluecore now operates as an Insider One company. Fayez Mohamood, Bluecore's co-founder and chief executive, was quoted in the announcement under that title. Neither company said whether Bluecore's brand or product line would change, or how many Bluecore employees would move across.
What Bluecore built
Bluecore was founded in New York in 2013. Its software helps retailers pull customer data into one place, recognise anonymous website visitors as known customers, and send them personalised messages by email, SMS, mobile, website and paid media.
The asset Insider One highlighted is the Transparent ID Network, Bluecore's own identity graph. According to the announcement, it handles more than 10 billion shopper events every day and feeds machine-learning models built for retail. In practice, it is the layer that links a browsing session to a named customer so that a retailer can send that person a relevant offer.
Bluecore has focused on retail from the start. When it raised money in 2021, it named Jockey, NOBULL, 4ocean, Lane Bryant, Foot Locker, Express, Tommy Hilfiger, Teleflora and Bass Pro Shops among its customers.
“Insider One's product is unlike anything I've seen in this industry.”
Why Insider One is buying
Insider One sells a platform that combines a customer data platform, journey orchestration across channels, personalisation tools and AI agents that run marketing workflows. The company says the system makes and carries out decisions in real time across more than 12 digital channels. It reports more than 2,000 brand customers, including Samsung, L'Oreal, Unilever, Allianz, ING Group, Toyota, Singapore Airlines and Gap Inc., and more than 1,500 employees in over 30 offices.
Hande Cilingir, Insider One's co-founder and chief executive, said in the release that the purchase strengthens the company's data infrastructure and supports its aim of running customer engagement autonomously for large enterprises. She described Insider One's platform as the layer that executes marketing decisions rather than an add-on to existing tools.
The deal also gives Insider One a larger base in the United States. Bluecore's customers are mostly large American retailers, and Insider One said it expected to build closer relationships with them. Mohamood said in the release that Insider One had built the infrastructure that Bluecore's identity and behavioural data was designed to power.
The founders and the funding
Mohamood founded Bluecore and has led it as chief executive. In August 2021, the company closed a $125 million Series E round led by its existing investor Georgian. FirstMark and Norwest, also existing backers, joined the round, along with new investor Silver Lake Waterman. The round valued Bluecore at $1 billion and took its total funding to more than $225 million.
FirstMark marked the sale on its website on the day of the announcement. Law firm Cooley, which said it had been Bluecore's main corporate counsel for more than ten years, advised Bluecore on the transaction.
Insider One was founded in 2012 by Cilingir, Mehmet Sinan Toktay, Muharrem Derinkok and Serhat Soyuerel. In November 2024 it closed a $500 million Series E led by General Atlantic, according to Wamda.
A busy market for retail marketing data
The deal joins a retail identity graph to a broader marketing platform. Bluecore built its business on turning retailers' own shopper data into named customer profiles, while Insider One has focused on AI agents that act on customer data across channels. FashionNetwork reported that Bluecore's assets could also feed into demand forecasting for partner retailers, though Insider One did not announce such a plan.
Neither company gave figures for Bluecore's revenue or headcount, and neither said how Bluecore's products would be combined with Insider One's platform. Pulse 2.0 reported that terms of the deal were not disclosed.
