Datadog Buys Eppo for $220M: Our Take on the Future of Experimentation

Datadog’s recent acquisition of Eppo for $220 million marks a significant moment in the rapidly evolving field of experimentation. First, we’d like to congratulate the teams at both Datadog and Eppo. This move underscores a broader industry trend that we’ve seen building momentum: experimentation is moving from a specialized discipline within tech giants to a core pillar of modern product and infrastructure development.

Experimentation Is No Longer Optional

Not too long ago, systematic experimentation was a secret advantage wielded by a select few—companies like Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Booking.com used extensive A/B testing frameworks internally, powering massive growth and innovation. However, these advanced capabilities remained out of reach for most companies, buried within proprietary systems.

Davis Treybig described this phenomenon as the “Experimentation Gap,” highlighting how smaller and medium-sized companies struggled without access to the powerful experimentation infrastructure available to tech giants. We created ABsmartly in 2020 precisely to close this gap, making robust experimentation tools accessible to all.

Consolidation and Platform Integration

Datadog’s acquisition highlights another significant industry trend: the integration of experimentation tools into broader development and observability platforms. Rather than stand-alone solutions, experimentation is increasingly being bundled within comprehensive software development stacks, offering seamless integration with analytics, monitoring, and infrastructure management.

We expect this trend toward consolidation to continue, reshaping the way experimentation is conducted. It reflects the reality that experimentation delivers the most value when deeply interconnected with other development workflows—allowing teams to move faster and with greater confidence in their decisions.

ABsmartly’s Unique Path: From Booking.com to Bootstrapped Independence

When we founded ABsmartly, we shared this fundamental belief in democratizing rigorous experimentation, but our path has been distinct. Rooted in our experience building one of the world’s most advanced experimentation cultures at Booking.com, we chose to bootstrap our company. This choice allowed us to prioritize sustainable, customer-centric growth without external pressures—enabling us to remain deeply focused on building a powerful experimentation platform driven by scientific rigor and practicality.

This independence has allowed us to remain uncompromising in our vision. We believe experimentation shouldn’t just be accessible; it should also be scientifically sound, flexible, and integrative, fitting seamlessly within varied workflows and teams—product, engineering, infrastructure, and beyond.

The Future: Experimentation Everywhere

The future of experimentation is expansive. While traditional use-cases in product development remain crucial—optimizing user experiences, increasing conversions, and enhancing retention—we anticipate significant growth in experimentation applied to infrastructure and DevOps workflows. Experimentation in infrastructure will help organizations navigate complex deployments, optimize performance, and manage costs more predictably.

As experimentation moves into these new frontiers, platforms must evolve. This is exactly the flexibility and integration ABsmartly was built to handle—able to easily adapt to diverse data streams, specialized metrics, and complex testing scenarios, bridging the gap between product development and infrastructure operations.

Welcome to the Future

We warmly welcome Datadog into the experimentation ecosystem. Their entry highlights just how vital experimentation has become—and validates our longstanding commitment at ABsmartly to deliver a best-in-class, scientifically rigorous, and deeply integrative experimentation platform.

We’re excited to continue leading and innovating, ensuring that robust, flexible experimentation capabilities remain accessible to all companies, not just the tech elite.

Here’s to the next chapter in experimentation, where insights and innovation drive growth for everyone.