Uniphore Named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CDPs

We are excited to share that Uniphore has been recognized as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner^® Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). 

This year’s report arrives at a pivotal moment for the category. As brands scale AI-powered personalization, real-time journey orchestration, and enterprise-wide data strategies, CDPs are stepping into a new role—not just as marketing tools, but as the core infrastructure that connects data, AI, and CX across the enterprise. 

The right CDP doesn’t simply unify customer data—it activates it. It powers AI models with clean, contextual insights, enables privacy-first personalization at scale, and fuels orchestration across every digital and offline touchpoint. Selecting a platform that supports composable architecture, AI readiness, and secure, real-time data access is key to building a scalable, future-proof customer experience strategy. 

In this post, we’ll break down our key takeaways from the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CDPs, explore the industry trends behind the evaluation, highlight Uniphore’s CDP Agent recognition, and share a practical framework for selecting the right CDP for your business.

Key Takeaways from the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CDPs

The Gartner Magic Quadrant segments vendors into four categories—Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players—based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. This year’s research reflects a market rapidly shifting toward composability, AI integration, and real-time performance.

Key insights

• The purpose of a CDP has evolved: enterprise IT organizations now view the investment as an essential component for both upstream technical users and downstream business users.  
• Today’s buying groups are cross-functional and responsible for a variety of engagement touchpoints across the customer life cycle. 
• Nontechnical users look to CDPs to orchestrate a variety of business applications (i.e., marketing, sales, service, support, commerce), CRM systems, and cloud data warehouses, with the goal of better coordinating GTM execution. 
• Uniphore’s composable CDP agent was recognized for its comprehensive enterprise data strategy, granular control of segmentation, and an integration ecosystem that provides robust connectivity across the enterprise technology stack.

What Gartner Says About CDPs 

As AI becomes more embedded in business workflows, CDPs are increasingly tasked with serving as the data center that powers personalization, prediction, and performance across channels. As a result, their role is quickly evolving beyond traditional marketing use cases—supporting real-time insights, orchestration, and analytics across all customer-facing functions.

How Gartner Evaluates CDP Vendors 

Gartner applies 15 weighted criteria in its evaluation—drawing from quantitative data, customer feedback, and deep vendor research. These criteria include:  

• Product features and roadmap 
• Operations and sales execution 
• Innovation and go-to-market strategy 
• Customer satisfaction and support experience 

The result is a visual framework for evaluating vendor fit—not just based on where they are today, but how well-positioned they are to lead tomorrow.

Trends Shaping the CDP Market in 2026

The 2026 Magic Quadrant reflects the key shifts shaping the future of the CDP market. Buyers are demanding more from their platforms—and the most successful vendors are those that can meet evolving enterprise expectations.

1. AI-Powered Personalization
   CDPs must feed AI and ML models with high-quality, unified data to drive predictive targeting, generative experiences, and intelligent decisioning at scale. 

2. Real-Time Activation
   Real-time audience building, segmentation, and cross-channel triggers are now table stakes. Enterprise brands want CDPs that can meet modern performance expectations. 

3. Composable Architecture
   The trend toward warehouse-native, composable CDPs continues to gain traction—allowing enterprises to activate data where it lives and reduce redundancy.  

4. Privacy & Data Collaboration 
   Modern CDPs must offer robust privacy controls, governance frameworks, and clean room integrations to support secure, compliant collaboration across business units and external partners. 

CDPs + AI: Why It Matters Now 

As AI investment continues to climb, marketing teams are counting on CDPs to power those capabilities. CDPs feed the AI models with rich, unified customer data—and when done right, they also enable real-time orchestration of those AI-driven insights across channels. 

With generative AI, predictive modeling, and autonomous journey orchestration becoming core requirements, your CDP must be capable of: 

• Activating AI models with fresh, contextual data 
• Triggering experiences in real time based on AI-powered predictions 
• Enabling low-latency activation across marketing, service, and commerce 

Uniphore’s CDP Agent executes these core capabilities and more. Its unified platform merges data infrastructure, intelligence, and execution—delivering on the full promise of an AI-powered customer experience. 

Uniphore’s CDP Agent: Recognized for Composability, Segmentation & Integration

In 2026, Uniphore’s CDP Agent was recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for its differentiated approach to enterprise-scale customer data activation.  

What Gartner noted:

• Enterprise data strategy: Uniphore adopts a comprehensive approach to CDP technology, positioning it as an intelligent data fabric with warehouse-native architecture and zero-copy querying that enable activation without data replication across all major cloud data warehouse vendors. The platform’s hybrid composable model supports structured, semistructured, and unstructured data, facilitating governed, real-time, AI-augmented activation.  
• Granular control of segmentation: Uniphore calculates segments at runtime, triggered by user actions or new data inputs, with no limitations on the number of segments or refresh frequency. The platform also leverages LLMs to deliver a prompt-based UX for segmentation, which requires additional compute resources but does not factor into Uniphore’s pricing.
• Integration ecosystem: The platform provides robust connectivity across the enterprise technology stack. This includes bidirectional, prebuilt integrations with some CRM, ERP, and call/contact center solutions. 

Uniphore’s CDP Agent Highest Rated by Peers

In addition to analyst evaluation, peer reviews offer valuable insights directly from real product users.  

Among the products featured within Gartner’s Customer Data Platforms Reviews & Ratings, Uniphore earned top scores in both integration and deployment and willingness to recommend.  

Peer feedback highlights:

• Ease of integration and deployment 
• Powerful orchestration across channels 
• Reliable performance at enterprise scale 
• Exceptional support and service 

Peer-driven insights like these reinforce the platform’s reputation for performance, usability, and support—especially in high-scale enterprise environments. 

Selecting the Right CDP for Your Business 

Choosing a CDP is a strategic decision with implications across your entire customer experience stack. To make the right choice, take a layered approach:  

1. Start with Use Cases
   Define the business goals driving your CDP search: real-time personalization? Anonymous-to-known conversion? Multi-touch orchestration? These priorities will shape your shortlist of  AI use cases. 

2. Understand Integration Approaches
   Explore the architecture behind each CDP—whether it’s warehouse-native, bundled, or hybrid. The right model depends on your data infrastructure, privacy needs, and team structure.  

3. Use Multiple Analyst Resources
   Balance your perspective with insights from several respected sources:

Real-World Success: Atlassian and Uniphore’s CDP Agent 

Atlassian, with 288 million customers and 10+ terabytes of data, needed a CDP that could scale with their ambitions—without compromising performance or governance. 

By implementing Uniphore’s CDP Agent, they unlocked:

A Future-Ready CDP is the Foundation of AI-Powered CX 

The 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CDPs reinforces a critical reality: Customer data platforms are no longer optional. They’re the connective tissue between data infrastructure, AI strategy, and customer experience. 

Uniphore’s CDP Agent was recognized for its zero-copy, warehouse-native enterprise data strategy, granular control of segmentation, and robust integration ecosystem—making it a powerful choice for enterprise organizations investing in AI as a marketing differentiator. 

By selecting a CDP built for composability, intelligence, and scale, brands can confidently drive the next generation of customer experiences.  

About Gartner 

Gartner delivers actionable, objective insight to executives and their teams. Its expert guidance and tools enable faster, smarter decisions and stronger performance on an organization’s mission-critical priorities. 

DISCLAIMER
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms, Lizzy Foo Kune, Rachel Dooley, Suzanne White, Benjamin Bloom, Audrey Brosnan, Published January 26, 2026  

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

Our history in the Gartner Magic Quadrant

Uniphore was previously recognized in the 2025 Gartner^® Magic Quadrant™ for Customer Data Platforms. Our latest recognition within the Leader category reflects our continued momentum and execution over time. 

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