For as long as you've used business software, it has worked the same way. Everything useful lives inside it: your data, your workflows, your rules. To reach any of it, you log in and find the right screen.
That's the bargain we all accepted. And the more a platform can do, the more there is to reach. Most teams lean on the parts they use every day, and a lot of value stays out of sight.
Event teams have felt this more than most. Events produce the richest first-party signal a company has: who showed up, what they cared about, who they met, and what happened next. For most of the team, it sits behind a login. And making sense of it takes a village. The analytics lead pulls the numbers, the CRM owner matches them to accounts, and the research team turns them into a story. Every question becomes a request, and every request waits in a queue.
That bargain is ending.
The screen is no longer the only way in
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI to software. It lets an AI assistant discover what an application can do and act on it, with your permission. Think of it as a common plug. Instead of a custom integration for every pairing, an application offers an MCP connection, and any compatible AI tool can use it.
Picture asking your AI tool (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.) to add three colleagues to the guest list for next month’s customer dinner. You never log in, find the event, or fill in a registration form. They show up on the list like any other guest, with the same settings you always use. You ask, and the work gets done.
Why events have the most to gain
There are two reasons.
The first is time. Even a simple webinar takes real work. You build the registration page, write and send the emails, and watch the numbers. Then you update sales, repurpose the recording, and report on what it was worth. Each step lives in a different system, and many of them wait on the one person who knows that system best. With MCP, one person can move all of it forward by asking.
The second is the signal. AI can generate almost anything. It can't fake being in the room. The more the world automates, the more a room full of real people is worth. So the signal from that room matters more, too.
Until now, the problem has been reach. Your AI tool knows a great deal about the world and almost nothing about your events. It can't see who registered, which sessions filled, or which no-shows downloaded the deck the next morning.
Connected to Cvent, it can. That's the shift. Your AI will finally understand and power your events, end to end.
What we're building toward
Our vision is simple to say and big to deliver: any marketer, event professional, or hospitality professional can put the full depth of Cvent to work, for every event they run, from wherever they already work, simply by asking.
Imagine opening the AI tool you use every day and typing:
- "How did our summit perform against our last five events?"
- "Show me the no-shows who downloaded the deck."
- "Find a rooftop venue in New York for 200 people and send an RFP to the top three."
- "Turn this webinar into a blog post."
The biggest shift comes when your AI can work across tools at once. Connected to Cvent and your CRM, it can answer the question every event marketer gets asked: what did this event do for the business?
- "Which accounts at our summit have open opportunities, and how much pipeline did the event influence?"
- "After today's webinar, send each account owner a summary in Slack of who attended from their accounts and what they asked."
No exports. No new logins. No retyping. Questions come back as answers. Requests come back as finished work, held for your review.
The same thinking extends across Goldcast, Splash, and ON24. More of your event program can meet you in the AI you already use.
What your AI can reach changes everything
Any software company can publish an MCP connection. The protocol is open, and that's good for everyone. What decides the experience is what sits on the other end of the connection.
The whole event lifecycle. Venue sourcing, registration, marketing, on-site, webinars, and post-event results, all reacable through one connection. When work moves into AI, the platform that can do the most wins. An AI connected to Cvent can finish a workflow. An AI connected to a point solution can answer a question.
Signal no general-purpose AI can reach. Your own event data makes every answer specific to your program. Benchmarks from almost 10 million events keep it calibrated. And the Cvent Supplier Network, with nearly 340K venues, sits behind the same connection.
Event know-how, built in. CventIQ Skills package how great events get run: the steps, the checks, and the moments to stop and ask a person. They carry 25+ years of event practice into every request, so your AI isn't guessing.
The permissions you already set. Your AI sees and does only what your Cvent role allows. If you couldn't see it in Cvent before, you won't see it now. Your data never trains external models, and there's nothing new to configure.
People stay in charge
Skills take on the clicks, not the judgment calls. Anything that changes your event waits for your yes. Contracts, negotiation, and the decisions that need a human stay with humans, by design.
The Cvent platform you know isn't going anywhere. This is an extra front door, built for the way your team already works.
Where we are today
Customers are building with us in closed beta now. The sequence is deliberate: first the connection, then the insight that compounds every time you run an event.
Expect more from your events™. Expect more from your AI, too.
See what's next
Explore what's coming on our MCP hub. Want to get fluent in MCP before it lands on your desk? Join What the MCP?, our new webinar series, starting November 24. Save your seat.
David Quattrone
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