Microsoft Taps Yobi AI to Challenge Data Garden Monopolies — Bringing Walled-Garden-Level Predictive Intelligence to Every Enterprise
AI / AI Tech Trends | 5 min read
Yobi, the leading behavioural AI company, has announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to unlock predictive consumer intelligence for US enterprises. Built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, Yobi has compiled the largest consented consumer database in the US — a 700 billion parameter behavioural foundation model built on Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory — helping organisations ethically access vast behavioural datasets to develop predictive AI models without compromising consumer privacy. Together, Microsoft and Yobi are levelling the playing field for US enterprises by unlocking access to the scale of behavioural intelligence once reserved exclusively for the largest online advertising platforms. Microsoft customers can purchase Yobi through the Azure Marketplace to securely centralise their permissioned consumer data, enrich it with Yobi's behavioural signals, and activate it in real time.
The Problem: Walled Gardens Have Monopolised Behavioural Intelligence
The advantage that Amazon and Google enjoy — their ability to predict what a consumer wants next, at scale, in real time — has historically been the exclusive property of trillion-dollar platforms. Smaller brands, retailers, and advertisers have faced a structural data disadvantage: understanding and predicting customer intent requires the kind of behavioural signals that only the largest platforms accumulate, and accessing those signals has meant either handing over customer data to closed, opaque systems, or simply going without. Yobi was founded on the premise that this advantage should not be so concentrated. The company's behavioural foundation model does not work like a large language model trained on text. Instead, it uses real-world data — purchases, store visits, and marketing conversions — to understand and predict consumer intent. Raw behavioural data is translated into anonymous, machine-readable vector embeddings: behavioural patterns compressed into numerical strings with no name, address, or personally identifiable detail surviving the process. What does survive is a statistically precise portrait of intent — a prediction of what that person is likely to do next — without ever exposing who they are. First-party data has always been the foundation for customer insights, yet only the largest advertising platforms have been able to capture behavioural signals at this scale. Yobi, with Microsoft's infrastructure behind it, is designed to function as the equaliser.
"Understanding and predicting customer intent is a competitive necessity, but enterprises today face a data disadvantage. Together with Microsoft, we're levelling the playing field — unlocking access to the scale of behavioural intelligence once reserved for the largest online advertising platforms, and making it available to every enterprise, with privacy and consent at the centre."
— Max Snow, CEO and Co-Founder, Yobi AI
How the Partnership Works — and What It Delivers
Microsoft provides the underlying compute, storage, and AI tooling through Azure — allowing enterprises to put Yobi's models into operation within existing workflows. Yobi manages behavioural AI training and customer modelling. Microsoft's alignment with Yobi reflects a shared philosophical position around privacy: Microsoft does not believe in collecting customer data without permission or sharing it with third-party companies, a stance that sits naturally alongside Yobi's privacy-preserving architecture. Yobi's team includes world-class machine learning experts who have built recommendation systems and AI products at Amazon, Uber, Twitter, Meta, and more. The partnership's results are already visible in practice. Wolverine Worldwide — one of the world's largest footwear designers, behind brands including Merrell and Saucony — used Yobi's AI in 2025 to reach high-value shoppers at the top of the funnel, driving meaningful net-new customer acquisition that outperformed legacy channels. Wolverine has ambitious targets for further AI infrastructure deployment and is positioned to leverage Yobi's behavioural AI on Azure across its portfolio at scale. Separately, Yobi's January 2026 partnership with advertising technology firm Infillion — the industry's first agent-native media execution platform — brings the same behavioural intelligence directly into media buying and optimisation workflows, delivering Google Performance Max-level campaign optimisation to independent advertisers on the open web.
"By combining Yobi's consented behavioural data with Microsoft's cloud and AI platform, organisations like Wolverine Worldwide are gaining critical insights that improve customer engagement and drive meaningful business growth. This partnership reflects our commitment to building AI solutions that are both innovative and responsible, with trust and privacy at the core."
— Judson Althoff, CEO of Commercial Business, Microsoft
Key Takeaways
- • Yobi (behavioural AI company; founded by Max Snow, Bill Wise, and Tom Griffiths) has announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to unlock predictive consumer intelligence for US enterprises. Built on Azure, Yobi has compiled the largest consented consumer database in the US — a 700 billion parameter behavioural foundation model built on Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory. Available via Azure Marketplace. Microsoft provides compute, storage, and AI tooling; Yobi manages behavioural AI training and customer modelling.
- • The core problem: behavioural intelligence at scale has been a walled-garden monopoly — the exclusive property of Amazon and Google — inaccessible to smaller brands without handing over customer data to closed, black-box systems. Yobi's behavioural foundation model uses real-world data (purchases, store visits, marketing conversions) not LLM text training — translating raw behaviour into anonymous vector embeddings. No personally identifiable information survives; what does is a statistically precise portrait of consumer intent, enabling enterprises to predict next actions without ever knowing who the consumer is.
- • Privacy architecture: raw behavioural data is anonymised before integration with enterprise systems. Microsoft does not believe in collecting customer data without permission or sharing it with third parties — a position directly aligned with Yobi's privacy-preserving approach. The dataset refreshes daily. Microsoft customers centralise permissioned consumer data via Azure Marketplace, enrich it with Yobi's behavioural signals, and activate it in real time for customer acquisition, marketing optimisation, and revenue growth.
- • Wolverine Worldwide (Merrell and Saucony brands) used Yobi's AI in 2025 to reach high-value shoppers at the top of the funnel — driving net-new customer acquisition that outperformed legacy channels. Chris Hufnagel (President and CEO, Wolverine Worldwide): Yobi enables targeting the right audiences with precision; supplementing customer knowledge with enriched data to personalise at scale across the portfolio. Wolverine has ambitious targets for further deployment across its largest upcoming campaigns.
- • Additional context: Yobi's January 2026 partnership with Infillion (industry's first agent-native media execution platform) brings the same behavioural AI directly into media buying and optimisation workflows — delivering Google Performance Max-level campaign performance on the open web with full transparency, audience insight ownership, and no cookie or walled-garden data dependency. Yobi's team includes ML experts from Amazon, Uber, Twitter, Meta, and more. Microsoft's early ECIF (End Customer Investment Funds) co-investment in Yobi was the capital that allowed the company to get off the ground.