Data Rights Unwrapped 2025: Honoring data rights for an AI-first world

How our customers built AI-ready foundations, unlocked new revenue, and honored billions of choices in 2025.

Transcend’s Data Rights Unwrapped, now in its third year, is our annual celebration of the progress and innovation shaping modern data governance. What started in 2023 as a snapshot of privacy transformation has evolved into a broader reflection on how organizations are building the infrastructure for an AI-first world.

The evolution of Unwrapped

When we launched the first Data Rights Unwrapped in 2023, the mission was simple: to spotlight the “privacy heroes” modernizing legacy processes and finally killing the spreadsheet. At the time, the industry was starting to recognize that manual surveys could not scale in a post-GDPR world.

By 2024, the narrative expanded from compliance to scale. Customers uncovered thousands of shadow systems, processed billions of consent changes, and began building more connected, automated data ecosystems.

2025 marked another pivotal shift

This wasn’t just a year of privacy transformation; it was the year responsible AI took center stage. As AI adoption accelerated across the enterprise, data privacy moved from a legal requirement to a core data infrastructure capability. Our customers didn’t just protect consumer data; they unlocked it, building the fully permissioned, policy-aligned, AI-ready foundations modern organizations now depend on.

At Transcend, we’ve had a front-row seat to this shift, and the scale of what global companies achieved in 2025 is extraordinary.

Here’s a look at how customers led the way.

The consented data economy: 14 billion opportunities unlocked

There is a common misconception that privacy slows down business. The 2025 data proves the opposite: when consumers are given seamless, transparent control over their choices, they’re more likely to engage with brands and companies.

14B+ consent opt-ins

This year, more than 14 billion opt-ins flowed through the Transcend ecosystem. Powered by transparent, user-first experiences, that permissioned data unlocked deeper personalization, stronger targeting, and measurable revenue lift.

25M+ users opted into marketing communications

Through advanced preference management, customers dramatically expanded their addressable audience. Over 25 million users opted into email, SMS, and direct channels, strengthening digital trust while increasing ROI.

The surge of responsible AI

The biggest story of 2025 was the explosion of responsible AI workflows. As companies moved from experimentation to production, they needed governed, accurate, permissioned data at scale, and they turned to Transcend to get it right.

1,150% growth in responsible AI workflows

Customers ensured user choices regarding AI usage, such as do-not-train signals, were respected. By permissioning consumer data at its source, enterprises enabled AI deployments grounded in responsibility and trust, rather than risk.

Efficiency at scale: $960M saved

Privacy operations have long been a drain on engineering and support resources. In 2025, automation fundamentally changed that equation, with close to a billion dollars saved for reinvestment.

$960M saved & 14M total hours reclaimed*

By replacing manual consumer data handling with fully automated orchestration, customers drove significant efficiency gains across engineering, security, operations, and support, freeing teams to focus on higher-impact work and accelerating business growth.

Honoring choices everywhere

In a fragmented data ecosystem, honoring a user’s request in one system isn’t enough. It needs to happen everywhere, instantly.

15B data rights fulfilled

Customers automatically fulfilled 15 billion user requests for deletion, access, preference changes, and more—across every connected system, database, and tool.

1B+ opt-outs

More than one billion opt-outs were captured and enforced across our customers’ data footprints, ensuring user preferences were honored consistently and in real time.

Unifying data to unlock growth

Customers also brought consent, privacy, and AI governance together across their data ecosystems through unified, automated pipelines.

Top 10 user data integrations in 2025

In 2025, customers integrated privacy and consent directly into their core customer data and engagement platforms.

Salesforce, HubSpot, Braze, Intercom, Twilio, SendGrid, Snowflake, mParticle, Adobe Experience Platform, Algonomy.

Customers are serving users responsibly at a global scale, supported by 170+ regulations and localization in over 189 languages.

A year of recognition

2025 wasn’t just a landmark year for customers; the industry also recognized the shift toward next-generation data governance and the approach Transcend has taken.

We’re proud to have been recognized as:

• ‘Leader’ in the 2025 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Data Privacy Compliance Software, recognized for our deep API, SDK, and integration capabilities for large, complex digital estates.
• Winner of the 2025 ADWEEK Tech Stack Award in the Addressable Identity Product/Platform category.
• Named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ for the second consecutive year.

Looking ahead

As we close the book on 2025, the intersection of AI and privacy has never been more critical, and our customers are leading the charge.

"We founded Transcend on the belief that data rights are human rights. Three years into our 'Unwrapped' tradition, seeing our customers honor billions of choices and use that permissioned data to power responsible AI is the ultimate validation of that vision.”

— Ben Brook, Co-Founder & CEO, Transcend

To our customers, thank you for leading the way. You have proven that respecting user rights doesn't just reduce risk, it’s an approach that powers the future of responsible growth.

And to the broader community of privacy professionals, engineers, and advocates: your work continues to move the industry forward. Whether you’re building the tools, writing the policies, or shaping the governance frameworks of tomorrow, your impact is felt.

Together, we’re building a future where innovation and integrity go hand in hand.

*Estimated savings and hours reclaimed are based on modeled reductions in manual review, lookup, and multi-system data handling time. Estimates assume an average of 6 minutes per manual system lookup and standard U.S. labor rates. Calculations reflect internal team effort only and exclude outside legal counsel hours. All reported metrics are aggregated and anonymized. Actual results may vary based on team workflows, data ecosystem complexity, and implementation scope.