HubSpot Unveils AI-Powered Marketing Playbook and 200+ New Features at Inbound 2025

'We did not chase clicks, we build trust' - How Hubspot wants to help write the AI marketing playbook

Hubspot has opened its Inbound 2025 conference with the launch of a host of new tools and services to help customers revolutionize their marketing in the age of AI, with 200 new features and an AI playbook the company has dubbed "The Loop". Integrating AI is crucial, and will be crucial for the foreseeable future, Hubspot predicts. So to give customers a competitive edge, Hubspot has introduced this brand new AI framework which helps organisations build human-AI hybrid teams. "Buyers used to start with your content on your website. Now, they are everywhere but your website" joked Hubspot CEO Yamini Rangan. "AI overviews [are] providing the answers at the top of every search. 60% of Google searches end up in zero clicks. Zero. That is why organic traffic is down." It's a familiar story with marketing teams across the world. Customer behavior has changed rapidly, leaving teams scrambling to change their tactics and strategies. "It's so bad that people are calling it the traffic apocalypse," Rangan warns. "Your content isn't broken, but that link from search to your blog - it's just gone. That's the big shift, and it's going to accelerate from here." Of course, AI has changed the game. But this presents opportunities, Ragan argues. Whilst AI has overhauled the SEO landscape and has been devastating for some companies, it has also helped other marketing teams to build deeper relationships with their consumer bases, she says. "AI is making it much easier to get to know your customers better, and it can map the intent of those customers to the information they need, and that means buyers get content that feels personal, contextual, relevant - content that converts." That's where Hubspot's new playbook comes in - "The Loop" helps customers engage with their audience in a more meaningful way - but also to build and consolidate their brand image through their communications and marketing. Within this, "The Loop" can be broken down into four key sections; Express, Tailor, Amplify, and Evolve. AI is revolutionizing the way customers consume information and browse products - so embracing the change is the only way to grow your audience and business. Users start by expressing their voice, their tone, and their thoughts by creating a style guide and brand guide that the AI can work with. This ensures your marketing materials stand out and offers potential customers more than just the standard paint-by-numbers content. "Let me give you a personal example. So I use AI every day, every hour, to write board models, strategy updates, and even this keynote" Rangan admits. "The number of em dashes on this thing was just out of control." Rangan outlines the style guide she gave her own AI with three prompts; be clear, be curious, and be human. She asks her AI to "write like a real person, no jargon please," "I'm not letting AI replace my voice, I'm using it to reach more people" she argues "and that is exactly what our best customers are doing as well." Then, AI is used to tailor the marketing materials to the audience, using AI to "craft hyper-targeted messages", mapping their intent to make messages, "feel personal, not just personalized". From there, The Loop allows users to grow their audiences by diversifying their channels to engage customers where they are. This is the most effective step The Loop brings, Rangan argues. "[Customers} are where you are. They're scrolling on social, they're listening to podcasts from creators that they trust, and they're reading email newsletters. That thing is cool again." But, that means customers are no longer browsing your site to find their answer: "AI overviews made sure of that," she says. And customers aren't getting their answers from reddit anymore, or from events - they're asking AI, and they want one trusted answer. Despite marketing subreddits being a 'very dark place right now' Rangan jokes, there's still plenty of hope. It just requires a serious rethink of your consumer base: "Your customers are still out there, and you still need search. Because even though your customers are not digging through all of your content, LLMs are reading your refreshed content. That is why great content matters, maybe more than ever. " This is where the final step comes in - to evolve. This is about using tools to learn faster and act faster. Before AI, marketing campaigns were slow, inflexible, and hard to steer - Rangan recalls, but the playbook helps organizations be more dynamic. The Loop has a scorecard with a number of metrics to measure your campaign's success and the overall engagement, ensuring that your content is AEO friendly and visible to a rapidly changing audience. "When you do all of this, your marketing is going to fly. Now, here's the thing with the entire loop: it never ends. And that's because with AI you don't win by launching, you win by learning." The Loop has launched alongside a range of new Breeze agents, with over 15 specialized agents designed for marketing, sales, and service. The companions can analyze CRM data as well as emails, calls, and documents to answer questions and queries. These are just some examples of the ways in which Hubspot platform is continuing to integrate AI into every part of its journey, with AI tools and assistants available by default to all customers. "AI will become our co-worker, not just a tool, but an intelligent teammate. It will learn, it will scale, and it will get work done on our behalf, and that means our roles will evolve" Rangan asserts.

HubSpot's 200+ product blitz aims to power hybrid human-AI teams - SiliconANGLE

HubSpot Inc. kicks off its fall 2025 Spotlight conference today with a sweeping set of updates aimed at helping marketers build hybrid teams of humans and artificial intelligence services. The updates span data infrastructure, AI agent deployment and enhanced tools for marketing, sales and commerce. HubSpot called it one of the most extensive product overhauls in the company's history. "The question isn't if AI will change your business," said Karen Ng, executive vice president of product at HubSpot. "It's whether you'll lead that change or be left behind." A cornerstone of today's announcements is Data Hub, a revamped version of the company's Operations Hub that centralizes structured and unstructured data from various tools, providing a unified context for automation, segmentation and reporting. Although the Data Hub supports structured and unstructured data, "I wouldn't position it as a data lake; it's closer to a data warehouse," said Matt Sornson, vice president of product and general manager for Operations Hub at HubSpot. "It's an easy way for marketers to combine and enhance all of their data in third-party applications." An accompanying feature, Data Studio, acts as a sandbox for data manipulation using extracted data without affecting core customer relationship management records. Native connectors for platforms like Snowflake Inc.'s Data Cloud, Amazon Web Services Inc.'s S3 and Google LLC's Sheets, users can join datasets, enrich records and deploy them directly into workflows. "Data Hub gives teams a safe, powerful playground to combine and enhance data," Sornson said. "Customers are asking for clean, unified, up-to-date data for their teams, but more and more for their agents and their AI workloads." HubSpot is also embedding AI directly into Data Studio to perform SQL-like transformations, deduplicate records and surface insights with minimal manual input. The self-service environment caters to marketers, sales teams and service leaders. The company is also expanding its Breeze line of AI copilots to cover more than 20 additional tasks. Breeze Agents are task-specific AI workers embedded directly into workflows and drawing on CRM data. They can be used for everything from content creation to personalized customer handoffs in service workflows. The new Data Agent answers customer-specific queries by analyzing CRM data, emails, recordings and web sources. Customer Agent is a concierge across all customer touchpoints that's typically capable of resolving over half of customer inquiries autonomously, HubSpot said. The Prospecting Agent is essentially a digital business development representative who identifies sales opportunities in real time. "These agents aren't standalone chatbots; they're teammates with context," Sornson said. "They extend human capability rather than replace it." HubSpot's Breeze Marketplace provides a centralized location to discover and install agents and assistants, while Breeze Studio allows users to tailor AI tools by uploading documentation and setting operational rules. In addition to the agents, HubSpot also has Breeze Assistants, which are context-aware companions that operate across HubSpot's platform. Custom Assistants are specialized experts created for specific business needs. "You can open the Breeze Assistant inside of Data Studio and it will help you understand your data, answer questions about the data set and create a new formula column," Sornson said. "It becomes your answer engine for things within the CRM, but also your building companion." Users can also create Custom Assistants, trained on specific business processes or guidelines. HubSpot is also embedding AI directly into its product hubs. The Marketing Hub now features a Marketing Studio where users can generate campaign assets with AI assistance. It can generate personalized emails, segments and calls to action using real-time CRM data. The Sales Hub is getting new meeting tools that automate meeting preparation and follow-up, as well as AI tools to flag at-risk deals based on conversation analysis. Commerce Hub is being enhanced with a configure, price, quote system powered by AI. Sales reps can draft quotes based on deal context, while a new Closing Agent answers pricing and product queries. A Quote Engagement feature notifies reps when a prospect views or shares a quote. HubSpot said such enhancements are intended to reduce the busy work that distracts people from strategy, creativity and relationship-building. "Instead of agents replacing humans, it's agents extending humans," Sornson said. "That's what we're seeing." Many of the new features are now available in public beta, including Breeze Marketplace, Breeze Studio and Data Studio. Existing Operations Hub customers will be automatically upgraded to the Data Hub with no change in entry-level pricing.

HubSpot Inbound '25 - HubSpot introduces a new Marketing playbook. Worth a read?

HubSpot made its mark by introducing the Inbound Marketing Playbook, a playbook that millions of brands across B2B SaaS and other industries implemented to attract and win customers. And it was a great playbook. However, things change, and HubSpot has realized that a new playbook is needed to support the AI transformation era, so they have designed it. It's called the Loop. Angela DeFranco, GM and VP of Product, explains what it is and how HubSpot is evolving Marketing Hub to support it. HubSpot has been at the forefront of the concept of hybrid teams, where humans lead and AI helps accelerate their work. However, DeFranco explained that HubSpot began to notice that the marketing tactics these new hybrid teams were using were no longer effective. That traditional content marketing and inbound marketing tactics weren't working: "the funnel wasn't flowing." The inverted triangle that represented the buyer funnel no longer worked because buyer behavior has changed. Buyers are no longer relying on traditional search engines, so there aren't massive amounts of potential leads coming in, some of which then convert to qualified leads (MQLs), and then even fewer convert to customers. Today, DeFranco said, the funnel is more like an hourglass. At the top is the brand and how you express yourself, your differentiators (it's wide). At the middle (which is now narrower), blanket nurturing campaigns aren't working. More true one-to-one personalization is needed. And at the bottom (also wider), the conversion rate is higher because people are coming in from answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude Research. They've had their buyer's journey, which is essentially an invisibility mystery box, explained DeFranco. HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan acknowledged this as well, saying: AI overviews are giving answers, and fewer people are clicking through to websites. Second, AI search is rising. More people are turning to LLMs for answers instead of searching for information and that means the way companies get found is changing rapidly. Because the shape of the funnel has changed, DeFranco said marketers do not know how to embrace AI in their hybrid teams. To help customers determine the best way to leverage AI, HubSpot has introduced a new four-step playbook that guides marketers on how to utilize AI within their hybrid teams. DeFranco said to think of it as the lifecycle of an idea. It looks like this: Following the Loop Playbook leads to continually evolving what's working or identifying new problems to solve, hence the term "loop." It's an infinity cycle, DeFranco explained. Marketers are continually moving through the loop, working on new ideas from start to finish. To support this new playbook, DeFranco said they re-envisioned Marketing Hub as the center of gravity for all these plays and campaigns. To help, HubSpot is introducing some new marketing features in beta, starting with the Marketing Studio. The Marketing Studio serves as the home base for all the strategies and channels a brand employs. DeFranco calls it the source of truth for planning, executing, and analyzing with an AI-powered visual canvas: We've always had this dream of bringing Marketing Hub up through the strategy side. But I think until you start to see AI moving from neat to necessary, which we're now seeing with our marketing tools, it becomes a reason why you want to pull that all into HubSpot. The other thing that Studio gives you is collaboration. So you can have those ideas and express those ideas, not only with your AI hybrid team co-worker, but also with your marketing manager who is thinking about this particular idea for a YouTube campaign or something like that. And then, because it's built on HubSpot, you can move through the entire loop within that Studio. So you can tailor and personalize it towards individual contacts in your database because it's built on the CRM. And then you can amplify it across channels, because it's built on all of the great investment and infrastructure we've made over the past 20 years. And then finally, you evolve it, and the studio also transforms into an analytics tool, so you can see what's working about that strategy that you created. I believe this is likely the most significant new development for HubSpot's marketing capabilities. Too often, marketers are stuck managing the overarching marketing strategy in a spreadsheet or another tool that doesn't integrate with the tools that actually do the work. HubSpot has made some improvements to its Campaign feature that help marketers track individual campaigns, but the Marketing Studio takes it much further and should remove the need for external tools. Also new is the Segmentation tool that not only tells a marketer what makes sense for different groups of people, but can also find new cohorts of users in the CRM that may resonate with the content more. Governance is crucial in ensuring that the actions of AI agents are trustworthy and reliable. DeFranco said there are three things HubSpot is doing to ensure this trustworthiness. First, HubSpot has put more rigor around emails and thinking through what good looks like. It has put processes and governance in place for the products and agents to build that trust foundation. Second, it is ensuring there are checks and balances along the way. DeFranco says: This is a hard UX problem. This is honestly one of the more difficult user experience problems we can face. ...Let's say it's 1,000 people, though you don't spot-check 1,000 emails. So what we're learning is the right balance of giving users the tools to see what the AI is outputting, and also the ability to spot-check where they want to. So, put in Barb's email. I'm most comfortable with it as far as if her email is good, everybody else is good, because she has a complex contact record, or whatever. So surfacing some of those tools so you can evaluate at scale just as much as you can send at scale. And third, there is a retroactive evaluation of the tools, providing marketers with visibility into what an agent did and how it worked. DeFranco said that it's human nature for marketers to feel like they have to figure everything out on their own. But many are starting to warm to the idea of using AI as a teammate to bounce ideas off of. It may take time to drive efficiency, but once it does, it will help pull marketers out of the "minutia of marketing." The goal of the new Loop Playbook is to help bring purpose back to marketing. To help marketers focus more on what their brand is about, the stories they want to tell, and how to express their differentiation. These are all things that humans are better at than AI, and they are essential to successful brands. DeFranco says: This is really the beginning of this journey for Marketing Hub, which is why it's exciting. There is no more one playbook. There is no, 'this is exactly how the inbound marketing playbook works. These are the numbers that you want to hit. There is no new channel.' That's another thing that I've heard, and I agree with. Right now, it's really about building a platform and a playbook that gives you clear steps, but allows you to be flexible, to create that playbook of one. Between having the context and the data and the tooling, you can really achieve this perfect, tailored playbook for your particular business, and it gets smarter over time as it learns about your business. I asked DeFranco if HubSpot has recommendations around the makeup of a hybrid team. She said there are no guidelines on the human-to-agent ratio, as it will be different for every company. However, HubSpot does provide recommendations on implementing a hybrid team. HubSpot has three flagship agents: The Data Agent, the Prospecting Agent, and the Customer Agent. Plus, it has the new Breeze Assistant. HubSpot recommends all brands deploy these agents and the assistant first. That's the first step to a hybrid team. DeFranco said if you use HubSpot, you are an AI-first company because HubSpot has built AI into all these touchpoints. The next step is to start increasing the AI agents in the hybrid team, including one or more the new agents announced at Inbound 2025. After that, it will vary. Brands can use the Agent Studio to hire additional tasks from the AI Agent Marketplace or build their own. The end result is a hybrid team that works for the brand, not some generic guideline. The other thing that this new hybrid team does is shift marketers from being siloed specialists in marketing to being AI-powered generalists, something HubSpot's CMO, Kieran Flanagan, has proposed: AI-Powered Generalists: Marketing teams are a collection of niche specialist teams - brand, product marketing, paid, seo, content, etc. We'll see more of the marketing team become generalists powered by AI. DeFranco agrees: I will say that we're making with Marketing Hub a pretty concerted effort to almost go back to our roots in that way and solve for the generalist marketer. Inbound marketing was really good for the generalist marketer. It was good for the content marketer and B2B SaaS marketing. But it really now is shaping up that there's so much connecting marketers across the world and industries, and the changing nature of buyer behavior, such that we're really excited to kind of go back to solving that all on one problem. That problem of I need to do more with less. That budgets are tighter than ever, and now we kind of finally see what that skill looks like because of AI, it's great again. It's an exciting time to be a marketer. As a marketer, I know the Inbound Playbook well. And I know that many companies will struggle to evolve their marketing strategies away from it and adopt the Loop Playbook. Not because they don't understand that change is needed, but because it's a huge change. There is no one way to win, no one set of actions or campaigns. AI is only making things more challenging as buyers adopt it to help them with their buying research. But AI will also be the answer to move forward in so many ways, and this new playbook shows how to leverage it while keeping with humans the things we do best. The question is, can HubSpot prove the value of this playbook like they did with the inbound one?

HubSpot Inbound '25 - HubSpot pitches next level AI with new agents and the Breeze AI Studio

HubSpot believes that AI will be transformational for SMBs (Small to Medium-sized Businesses), and it's the company's mission to provide them with the tools - AI assistants and agents - that will not only help humans, but do the actual work for them. At its Inbound conference today, HubSpot has announced a number of new agents, some important updates to existing ones, a new Agent Marketplace, and Breeze Studio. Nicholas Holland, Head of AI at HubSpot, filled me in on what's being announced and how HubSpot is championing small businesses through AI. For HubSpot, a hybrid team is one where humans lead and AI accelerates - it's not one or the other; it's both together. This is what the company focuses on when it builds new capabilities and agents. What does a hybrid team look like? Holland said every employee will gain leverage by having an AI assistant. He said AI has matured a lot in the last year. At the same time, customers want it deeply tied into their context (CRM data, campaign data, processes, context). That requires not a co-pilot, but an AI assistant. As you head down this path, Holland said there are some important things to understand: And that's what Breeze Co-pilot is now positioned as - the Breeze Assistant. When you interact with the AI assistant, it has access to all your business context. But the Breeze Assistant doesn't just look at your HubSpot data; it can take action on it, doing things such as updating records, assigning tasks, and creating campaigns. Employees still have access to external assistants, like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini (Gemini was announced at Inbound). These assistants can provide access to HubSpot data, but they can't take action on it. Holland says: When people have these other assistants, whether it's in their personal life, maybe their business hasn't decided on which one they actually want for their company, they are picking a myriad of LLM choices, and we want them to still be able to have access to their HubSpot information. They can't take action over there, but they can grab that information. And so that's our strategy, which is, if we are their customer platform, their kind of system of context, how do we effectively meet them where they are when they work? If the Breeze Assistant is for the individual, then what's for the team? Holland said HubSpot wanted to understand how it could help teams gain more capacity and bring specialists onto their teams. The mission, he said, was to make small teams mighty. That mission is how the company focused on AI and hybrid teams and why it developed what Holland called opinionated, out-of-the-box agents to extend teams. But there's an important piece of context here. Holland said companies are confused. There are so many software providers pitching agents and companies are having to stitch them together across services. What could HubSpot do to alleviate this confusion? It starts with the Breeze Marketplace, where HubSpot provides specialized agents for marketing, sales, and service. Right now, the agents and assistants in the Marketplace (and there are about 20 right now) are HubSpot-built, but Holland said that at some point, they would love to open the marketplace up to partners (think Agent.ai for marketing, sales, and service). Then there's the Breeze Studio, which allows companies to configure, extend, and train the HubSpot agents. Holland said HubSpot sees new roles emerging to support this work, such as agent managers and agent trainers. One of the goals when building the Breeze Studio was to make it very easy for SMBs to manage and train their agents. What does customization look like? Holland said it depends on the agent. It may be to provide the agent with additional instructions or context. Or it could involve connecting new tools, like calling a third-party database. Holland explains that this is an emerging area, and HubSpot believes that many customers will rely on partners to help them, while also training their internal team members simultaneously. Currently, the Studio is open to a select few customers who want to create their own agents. Holland said HubSpot sees agent builders as far too complex, so it's taking the time to study how to make the process "easy, fast, and unified." Don't expect to hear much about this aspect at Inbound. Can you string agents together to perform a complete automation or workflow? Holland argues that you can because HubSpot is one context layer, one unified code base. He says agents can be called from automation, they can be kicked off on the CRM card, work together, or treat another agent as a tool (e.g., the Prospecting Agent uses the Research Agent). However, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the options, and what HubSpot has found is that customers look to the company to make things easier. Holland explains: The Customer Agent is an interesting one that we launched about a year ago. And the promise of a Customer Agent is that you want it to be smart enough to resolve issues, right? It's a pretty basic promise. What we have found, though, is that our customers really look to us to make sure that this is the easiest to set up for the highest value they can get. That's very different from what you'll see in many other solutions out there, which are infinitely configurable and very powerful; those can be very challenging for many of our customers to manage. Right now, there's nothing in the market that is as easy to use as Customer Agent with as much quality and power that it has right now. That's the balancing that we're all under. The Customer Agent is one of three core AI agents in the HubSpot platform. It has all the necessary customer context and can switch contexts and transition into a sales or marketing scenario. Holland described it as the concierge for the entire front office, handling all types of questions and routing customers or prospects to sales representatives, booking meetings, qualifying prospects, and even referring individuals to the Prospecting Agent. Holland adds: These are all just natural connect-the-dots inside of our system, like we've always done, where we help our tools work very seamlessly together. The Prospecting Agent also features new capabilities, including deep research on accounts and contacts. It listens to intent signals and updates its approach accordingly. It's like having a business development representative (BDR) for an account executive. The third core agent is the Data Agent, which is available from Starter subscriptions and above. This agent researches and answers questions about customers. It looks at your CRM data, call recordings, emails, documents, and even external web sources. The agent can also find new information about a customer or prospect from across the Web and add that data to the CRM using smart properties. But that's just the core of agents for HubSpot. At Inbound, they announced 15 new agents for marketing, sales, and service. Some are public beta, while others are still private beta. For example, in marketing, you now have a: For Sales, there's the Closing Agent, RFP Agent, Company Research Agent, Deal Loss Agent, Call Recap Agent, and the Customer Handoff Agent - all available in public beta. These agents are available in the Breeze Marketplace, in addition to other agents previously announced, such as the Content Agent. Keeping up with the latest developments in AI can be a headache. It's nearly impossible to do. And a lot of software companies (including the leading large language models) don't make it any easier. New models, new agents, new tools, and technology. It's exciting, but for companies that are trying to figure out how to leverage it to drive efficiency and success, having a partner like HubSpot can mean the difference between drowning in process and rising above the noise. HubSpot CEO, Yamni Rangan explained it very well: This is a multi-year tailwind. We are taking a super-patient and very strategic approach to AI, which is we are embedding it into the platform and delivering work through agents, and we have the ability to monetize both of those, but first by focusing on the value. What I appreciate most about HubSpot is that it's committed to delivering Agents and AI capabilities that aren't complex to learn how to use. There are easy, out-of-the-box agents to hit the ground running, and as companies learn and adapt, there are more advanced capabilities, like the Breeze Studio. I haven't seen the Studio in action, so I won't say it's easy to work with; ask me in a month or so after I get my fingers in it, testing new things for a client. And the Marketplace is the next iteration of the HubSpot Marketplace, just for AI agents and Assistants, and I can only imagine the partners chomping at the opportunity to build and sell agents into one of the largest platforms available for SMBs.

HubSpot Inbound '25 - AI meets CPQ to improve CX, says Sarika Garg, GM of HubSpot's Commerce Hub

Last year research firm Forrester reported that up to 86% of sales deals stalled because getting a quote can take so long. It found that B2B buyers abandon deals because they are often so time consuming. Another factor is that sales reps are still doing manual calculations and dealing with cumbersome spreadsheets and approval email chains, which also slows down the process, and risks losing the sale At Inbound '25 HubSpot announced a beta version of AI-powered Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) in its Commerce Hub, with the aim of streamlining the closing process and creating better customer experiences. Sarika Garg, now GM of HubSpot's Commerce Hub, joined the company after the acquisition of Cacheflow last year. Traditional CPQs were built for manufacturing companies, and were slow, complex, and expensive, according to Garg. Cacheflow re-designed CPQs to put users first. She recalls:: Nine months ago, when we joined HubSpot, we brought all these learnings that we have had from Cacheflow, and started working with thousands of customers, to once more reimagine CPQ, putting AI at the center of it. For example, the CPQ for Commerce Hub now has AI-powered quote creation, which automatically uses conversations and deal contexts. Sales reps can quickly customize and send quotes, and their buyers can review, accept, and pay from a single page. Garg believes that this first experience with a customer is very important for any ongoing relationship: My personal story around CPQ started a few years back when I bought a Tesla, and in five minutes on a mobile phone, I was able to configure, buy, and pay, and it was a mind-blowing experience for me. If you can buy a $60k car in five minutes, why does it take us days and weeks and months of back and forth to buy some service or software? There had to be a better way. She believes that CPQs matter for every single person in the Go-To-Market (GTO) team: They matter for marketers, because that proposal that your seller sends to your buyer is basically a mini brochure. It's a mini website that talks about the value of your company, the products, the positioning of how you talk about them. As a marketer, you want that to be perfect. If you're in operations, RevOps or admin, you don't want to be spending your time approving every single code. You want the system to do that for you. If you're a seller, you don't only want to send a code. You actually want to track who is looking at the code? How many times are they looking at it? HubSpot research has also found that sales would often get stuck on the last part of the manual process, and this is increasing as more and more buyer stakeholders are added to the buying process. AI-powered CPQs allow customers to have a seller who helps them close the deal and really understand a solution, says Garg: You have a very transparent experience and with AI, this opportunity becomes even more interesting. The gap widens between legacy CPQs and AI CPQs. Legacy CPQs are dis-connected, which means that you don't get any insights, they do not help you to accelerate your revenue in any meaningful way. AI CPUs are very different. They actually enable and accelerate your closing. HubSpot believes in hybrid teams, where humans lead and AI accelerates and empowers, and this seems particularly true for CPQs for Commerce Hub. Garg explains: AI members on your team help your reps to do their best work ever, because they can focus on the customer, and they give your buyers an amazing experience by creating a revenue engine that's always on, and that's helping you to close the deal. There are three pillars for an AI CPQ: code creation, negotiation, and closing. Garg expands: Code creation takes all the CRM data and creates codes. The next pillar is negotiation, this back and forth that happens. You can show risks and actually move the deal forward much faster. And the third pillar of the AI CPQ is closing and is all about taking processes around signing, paying, renewing and connecting them in one flow. HubSpot works closely with partners on AI strategy, and product development, and now has over 6000 Solutions and more than 1,700 App partners. The company believes this ecosystem is really important, and that partners are really key. According to Garg: When we started building this product we wanted to put partners at the center of it, because there is no way we can build everything, and we shouldn't. For solution partners it's all about implementing. For example, they're going to go towards AI to customize that active RevOps. They're all incredibly smart and understand the customers' business processes better than we do, because they're so into that particular industry segment. They're experts. The App partner ecosystem is also becoming stronger. Our customers wanted it to be integrated, and it's a perfect example of how we were independent, but we integrated to offer customers a pretty smooth experience. Historically most of HubSpot's customers have been SMBs, but a growing number of larger enterprise businesses are now becoming customers. This wide range of different sized and resourced customers brings its own issues for the company, one of which is the readiness of organizations to begin implementing hybrid AI teams. At Inbound '25 the vibe was very much, one of 'No pressure but start investigating AI as soon as you feel ready to'. Garg comments: I think HubSpot recognizes that if you're not ready to start the AI journey, let's not even talk about it. Let's do this at your own speed. If you have started using chat GPT every day or recording your calls, then let's actually talk about how we can leverage some of those capabilities. But there are also customers who are like, 'This is what I'm doing every single weekend. I live for this. Tell me more'. Sarika Garg's presentation at Inbound '25, 'Time Kills Deals. AI CPQ is here' was packed. After drilling down into the potential of HubSpot's AI CPQ for Commerce I can see why. Losing prospective deals because of long winded and cumbersome CPQ systems must be incredibly frustrating for sales and marketing folk. The presentation also offered a really good argument for the hybrid teams that HubSpot has always championed. In the past HubSpot's approach to AI has been gradual and fairly cautious. But this year its AI-centered announcements, and particularly its AI CPQ for Commerce Hub looks pretty compelling for most of its customers right now. Garg concludes:

HubSpot Inbound '25 - AI learnings from end user best practice

At diginomica we're always on the lookout for learnings from tech implementations in practice in the real world. One of the most popular panel sessions at this year's HubSpot Inbound dealt with how AI is pushing change in go -to-market (GTM) strategies. Chaired by Jonathan BURG, SVP of Revenue, at revenue performance management company, New Breed, the session examined how successful organizations are using AI, based on the results of a worldwide survey of over 1600 HubSpot customers from sales, marketing, revenue, operations and finance. Burg kicked off the discussion: Last year, I stood on this stage and spoke about disruption. The year before that, we spoke about change, and this year, we really wanted to find that right word, because we're not just being forced to re-invent our GTM strategies, but invent an entirely new motion all together. Sydney Sloan, CMO for technology, software and services marketplace G2 picked up the future theme: This is not a paradigm shift. This is a 'burn it down' moment. It's changing so much, so it's not a tweak here or there. I encourage people to really imagine starting over. Like a blank blueprint, now we have moved away from traditional models that worked for a really long time. Cathy McPhillips, CMO SmarterX, an AI centred research, education and advisory company, agreed: We've re-invented our brand, and we've been looking at what our customers need? Our mission is AI literacy, and that is a moving target. So we're not only trying to figure out what our customers need, and what's happening with the industry, but what's going on with our brand. We are constantly having to re-invent all of these things on an hour to hour, day to day basis. But this constant re-invention is impacting the bottom line. The survey found that only 6% of revenue leaders believe that they're going to hit their targets this year. But there were some key trends from organizations who are likely to hit their targets. The most successful organizations are investing in automation and agents, but the ones who really skyrocketed in figures from year are investing in talent. So, what is top talent? G2's Sloan commented: I hear a lot about people re-designing their organizations, and trying to get teams up to speed. The first thing to do is make sure that your AI skills are on point. I don't think anybody's going to get hired today if they can't demonstrate how they use AI. You want to showcase things like curiosity, adaptability to change, how to embrace change. Make sure you're spending your time really honing those skills. McPhillips had recommendations for organizations integrating agents into their talent strategy: We've been hiring some new talent for some of our roles, and we built into our job descriptions, 'Using AI agents to fundamentally change how you're working and to improve your output'. She added that knowing how to improve and learning how to do your job better using agents is key. I built a 'Kathy GPT' that I use every single day. I've been doing this for 30 years, and it's changed the way I'm working. So having your teammates figure out how to use AI agents is very, very important. It's not like, 'Oh yeah, I'm curious. It's like, you have to be doing this stuff'. The most successful companies are totally re-defining their GTM strategies, according to the survey. Burg commented: Last year I said that inbound [marketing] is dead, and that was re-inforced through the research. Organizations are now investing in a more agile, more account driven and a customized GTM that's more in line with the expectations of their buyers." Kerry Cunningham, Head of Research and Thought Leadership at revenue intelligence platform, 6Sense, said some things in the GTM fundamentals have changed, but more importantly users' understanding of those fundamentals are shifting: One of the shifts is the buying person, as there is now more than one person inside the organization you're selling to. That matters, because it's a lot easier to see when multiple people are exhibiting interest in a solution, and it gives us a great advantage in seeing them, but it also means that we have to be able to influence multiple people, and that those people inside those organizations have different biases. Cunningham's company 6Sense has just done research which found that buyers have done between five and 10 times more evaluation of solutions than they used to. He said: So everybody that your marketing is selling to is deeply experienced in your category, and everybody comes to every buying journey with preferences that they develop, and personal experience. That buying journey is not about some sort of objective view of vendor information and deciding which is best. About five or six, 10 or 11 people start a buying journey with biases and want a vendor to come out on top, and they spend six to nine or 12 months arguing about who's going to win, and they're looking at your information to help them either boost their case or knock you out. The buying journey is not some objective evaluation of criteria, that's kind of quaint now." Sloan's organization, G2 does yearly buyer behavior research that backs this up, discovering that buyers who use LLMs (Large Language Models) to influence their buying decisions has increased from four or five people saying they use them as part of their research, to most recently 90% of buyers, with 51% saying they start their research process that way. She commented: How do you influence the LLMs to make sure that you're part of their research process? It could be people are bringing their biases, but then they're going to LLMs to do the extra research validation. We've heard stats about people doing research, they are so much further along in their decision and research by the time they come to you. The best customers, according to the HubSpot survey, are heavily investing in data strategies, and are leaning into predictive analytics. They are also integrating systems across their organizations so that they can quickly have that data available to action across the entire process. Highlighting this intersection of AI and data McPhillips recommended not only being data ready, but also people ready: Your people really need to know why, what data you're using, and where it's going. Everybody needs to talk to one another. Really educating your people on all of this is so important. Burg added: I think there's this underlying notion of people and alignment, and we do find that organizations that are more aligned around the metrics that matter, outperform their peers. The research found that the best performers are not just investing in productivity and efficiency, they're investing in insights, strategic planning, and in AI to create the most personalized experience possible. But 68% don't feel ready to take advantage of AI and autonomous agents. McPhillips urged companies to take that first step. It's been three years since Chat GPT launched, and you haven't started yet, or you haven't gotten your team to the right place? I have to tell you, be vulnerable, take that first step, just do it. One needs to be careful with supplier research, but this session highlighted some interesting insights from the research that could apply across the whole AI arena. Top challenges for organizations are keeping up with changing technology landscapes, integrating AI in a meaningful way, and finding and retaining the right talent.

HubSpot Inbound '25 - where shift happens as marketers set out to re-wire AI

Driving from San Francisco airport to my hotel for the annual HubSpot conference, INBOUND 2025, - my first visit to the city in two decades - I was struck by the billboards. Nearly every single one mentioned AI. 'AI won't take your job' , 'AI powered', 'The future is AI' - on and on they went. Billboard advertising is as American as applepie, but as enthusiastic as the hype may be, AI is disrupting traditional marketing and sales funnels, and businesses are having to take a serious look at the fundamental structure of those operations. This year's HubSpot Inbound '25 was all about 'leaning in' to AI, and starting to really use it to create strategic business advantage. More than 13,000 people attended the conference which concentrates on the latest trends in inbound marketing and sales, revenue operations, and of course, AI. In the opening keynote Yamini Rangan, CEO, HubSpot told the audience that organizations are using AI to get more and better information about products and suppliers, completely disrupting traditional inbound sales and marketing funnels. She explained: Before, sellers like us built strategies to attract buyers to our websites. That playbook was straightforward. It was simple and was called inbound. We drove awareness through brand, we created content, we optimized it for search, and when buyers searched, they clicked and landed on our website. We collected their emails, sent them even more content, and nurtured them as leads, and they became our customers. But now that process is completely different, Rangan said, with customers using AI to trawl through files on social media like Tiktok, YouTube, Reddit, and through podcasts: They are swiping, scrolling, and switching apps every few seconds. Buyers used to start with your content on your website, now they are everywhere but your website. AI overviews, and provides the answers at the top of every search. That's a big shift, and it's going to accelerate from here. But Rangan suggested AI has given sales and marketing teams an opportunity to transform their operations, and grow their businesses in this new AI driven era. And, as you would expect, the company launched a range of AI powered products and agents at Inbound '25, as well as its new marketing playbook, Loop to help companies cope with this new world. She commented: The silver lining is that AI is making it much easier to get to know your customers better, and it can map the intent of those customers to the information they need. And that means buyers get content that feels personal, contextual, relevant, content that converts. She believes that good content, and focusing on prospective and existing customers through AI-enabled, highly-personalised advertising and marketing will be critical, if organizations are to evolve and achieve success in this new era. She declared: The Loop is dynamic, always learning and evolving, and at the center is a new kind of partnership between humans and agents. There are four steps. You express who you are. You define your taste, your tone, your point of view, before you bring in AI. Then you have to tailor that message to your customers. You use AI to make those interactions feel very contextual, personal, and relevant. Then you amplify to meet your customers where they are, and you diversify your content across multiple channels. And then finally, you evolve in real time. You iterate effectively and quickly with AI. This is the new growth playbook, human authenticity with AI's efficiency. Businesses will be able to treat every customer individually, and map their behaviour to give them the information that they need, according to Rangan. Of course it all starts with data. Rangan told delegates: You have to enrich your data with all the intent signals. Did your customer check out your pricing page? Or a competitor. Those are instant signals that tell you what your customer is thinking about. She said this approach, using this enriched data allows businesses to craft highly targeted messages using AI: If your customer did check out the pricing page three times, then AI should send a follow up message. 'Still comparing options, there's a nice breakdown of the pricing plans,' a nice little nudge. And then through all of it, you stay in the loop and validate the message, because nobody knows your product and your message better than you do." Getting higher engagement with your content is every marketer's dream, according to Rangan and now it's within reach: It's working for HubSpot and it's working for our customers. You can have great content, but if you're not where your customers are, it does not matter. Which brings us to Amplify, the heart of the new growth playbook. Amplify is about how you diversify channels to engage your customers where they are. Two AI enabled behavioral shifts have changed the sales and marketing process forever. The first shift is where customers are spending time looking, and the second is how they find answers. Rangan observed: They're scrolling on social media, they're listening to podcasts from creators that they trust, and they're reading email newsletters. They're asking questions. They're asking people in Reddit communities and in live events like this, and they want one trusted answer. Trust and developing relationships were big themes at Inbound '25, with a keynote from creator and producer at MKBHD, Marques Brownlee finishing the first day's programme. His main Youtube channel, where he carries out in-depth tech reviews and analysis has over 20 million subscribers. He believes the key to his success has been building trust with his audiences, evolving with them, and always putting that audience focus first. Rangan said companies need to rethink how they reach their customers, and use the power of AI to cover all the bases. She said: You have to rethink how you reach your customers. Your customers are still out there, and great content matters maybe more than ever. You have to be strategic on social media. You have to be where your customers are, with great video, audio and text content that really engages them. AI Engine Optimization (AEO) is replacing SEO as business buyers increasingly use AI to find information, and marketing has to reflect that, Rangan argued: SEO is all about ranking. You just have to show up in the top five links. AEO is about being part of the answer. SEO is about reputation, AEO is about reputation of the sources, but also repetition of your content across multiple high authority sources. SEO volume was the goal, but in AEO conversion is the game, and this is why we've made AEO the top priority within HubSpot. Rangan likens the changes in marketing being driven by AI as like moving from being on a big cumbersome ship, to being on a jet ski: There's just been a lot of talk lately about AI chaos and search disruption. But here's my hot take. Marketing the last few years has felt very incremental. AB test this, adjust that. Not great. Not fun. What is ahead is smarter, faster and more human, and just a whole lot more fun. So let's bring that fun back into marketing, and let's re=wire how we grow with AI. There was a lot to unpack at Inbound '25. Product launches, AI strategy workshops and even sessions suggesting it might be an idea to just 'burn down' current marketing theories. But amongst the AI noise, hype and billboards, attendees that I spoke to were quietly positive and excited about what they might be able to achieve. Some hadn't begun yet, while others were already seeing good results. Right now HubSpot and its customers seem to be in a good place to make the most of an AI-enabled world.

HubSpot Inbound '25 - "We are now tapping into work budgets", says CEO Yamini Rangan

We are moving from delivering software to delivering work. An interesting mission statement of direction from HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan talking to analysts at the firm's Inbound user conference in San Francisco this week. What does that mean in practice? We're going through a big technology shift. But more importantly, that is raising the bar for customers' expectations of us. And it is providing new ways in which companies can grow. Customers today expect us to resolve tickets, write blogs, schedule meetings, just like they would a coworker. So customers are expecting not just software that does the work for them, but actually does help them get more accomplished to grow. That's a big shift, and that unlocks a huge opportunity for HubSpot, she suggests: We're no longer limited by the software budgets. We are now tapping into the work budgets...We see a generational opportunity here to deliver products that do work, not just support the work, to reimagine marketing beyond search with a new playbook, products and the whole ecosystem and to power millions of organizations that are now scaling with AI. Ah yes, AI, of course. It is 2025 after all. Rangan argues that HubSpot saw the shift towards AI early on and responded accordingly. The transformation continues today with the goal of turning HubSpot into an Agentic Customer Platform, she explains: Before AI, we helped our customers take actions in hubs; now we are helping our customers take action in both hubs and agents. Before AI, the context was in structured data, company contacts, tickets, deals; now it is in structured data, unstructured conversations and all of the external intent signals. Before AI, we enabled our customers to collaborate across their go-to-market teams; now we are enabling hybrid teams of humans and agents to get work done. This is a complete re-imagination of how companies can scale, and it actually allows HubSpot to add more value to our customers. The way we are doing it is by bringing together three interconnected layers: context layer to know your customer, action layer where work happens and an orchestration layer to connect everything together. Each layer is powerful on its own and stronger together. Of course, it is 2025 and every tech vendor worth its salt is a self-proclaimed AI company - and many of them always have been it seems, they just didn't get round to mentioning it before now. Regardless of the claims and counter-claims being made, it's undeniable that it's a very crowded market out there, so what makes Rangan confident that HubSpot is unique and its position defensible. The answer, she says, is context: LLMs (Large Language Models) can, of course, write a sales e-mail. But without knowing who the buyer is, what the last 10 conversations were, who the competitor is and what's the best way to handle objections for that competitor, that e-mail will be generic. LLMs know everything that's in the public web, not what's in the sales pipeline, which, by the way, changes every minute. As an Agentic Customer Platform, we have that context. We know the relationship of the users, their roles, the tasks and the logic that is needed to take action on their behalf. The richer that context, the better the outcomes that AI can drive. And nobody has richer customer context than HubSpot. That is because we bring together data, user and domain context. Breaking those down, Rangan goes on: Data is what AI needs to do work, not just guess about the work to be done. HubSpot has 19 years, 270,000 customers worth of those touch points. Every campaign launched, every e-mail sent, every deal closed, every CPQ transaction across the entire customer journey - that is the data that AI needs in order to do great work. We also need the user context, so AI knows who is asking and what permissions they can take based on the role. HubSpot maintains that state for the user, their roles, their preferences, their teams, the actions they can take. All of that is within HubSpot. We are built to maintain state across thousands of users in a business context, something LLMs are not designed to do. And then we have the domain context. We have the deep knowledge of SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) and what drives growth within SMBs, what good prospecting looks like, which campaigns convert and what the good handoffs look like, and we are building all of that into HubSpot. So you put these 3 pieces together, data, user and domain context, that is HubSpot's unique advantage - rich customer context that powers every action customers take in order to drive growth. A strong, articulate exposition of the HubSpot worldview and roadmap. Inevitably Rangan was also asked about the current seeming favorite analyst focus - does the AI era mean the end for SaaS, a worldview espoused by OpenAI's Sam Altman, but firmly rejected by the likes of Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach and Salesforce's Marc Benioff. Rangan joins their ranks: I have a very specific point of view, which is that AI and SaaS are complementary. I'm following all this raging debate about one eating the other. I think it's complementary because if you think about LLMs, they provide insights. And HubSpot, we provide the customer context to drive insights about growth. That is not there in an LLM. And then if you look at what an LLM is great at doing, taking action on behalf of one user, we are really good at maintaining state across thousands of users, their permissions, their roles and what actions that they can take in a business context. Those two are complementary and all of the interactions now get started on LLMs. People are beginning to start with asking questions and all of the actions and then more importantly, the logic that is necessary to take the action in a business context, that belongs in HubSpot. So I think the combination is powerful, and our viewpoint is that we are going to deliver more value to customers. Sadly that's not the last time a CEO will be answering this increasingly tedious question, but we soldier on...

HubSpot unveils blueprint to building hybrid human-AI teams with 200+ product updates at INBOUND 2025

New products include Data Hub, new Breeze Agents, Breeze Marketplace and Studio, and the new AI-powered CPQ in Commerce Hub While many businesses are experimenting with AI, most are still treating it like a side-project. At HubSpot, we believe the future belongs to businesses that build hybrid human-AI teams where smart people plus smart systems create exponential growth. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250903907062/en/ "We're at a pivotal moment," said Karen Ng, EVP of Product at HubSpot. "AI transformation is happening whether we're ready or not. The question isn't if AI will change your business -- it's whether you'll lead that change or be left behind. The companies that win won't be the ones with the most AI tools; they'll have the smartest hybrid teams where AI doesn't replace people, but multiplies their impact." ○ Bringing together structured, unstructured, and external data is critical because hybrid teams are only as good as the data that powers them. 2. Enable your people ○ Embedded AI across HubSpot's customer platform reduces busywork and allows humans to focus on strategy, creativity, and vision. 3. Build your AI team ○ A combination of assistants and agents will become digital teammates that work alongside humans to accelerate growth. The products launched at the Fall 2025 Spotlight give GTM teams the tools they need to make their hybrid team a reality. Connect your data Most businesses are making 100% of their decisions with only 20% of the data.* The rest is scattered across systems, trapped in conversations, or just plain bad. The new Data Hub and powerful updates to HubSpot's Smart CRM bring business data together -- structured, unstructured, and external -- to give GTM teams, and their AI, unified, clean, and complete context. ○ Data Studio uses AI to turn scattered context into unified data just by adding a column, powering smarter segmentation, automation, and reporting across HubSpot. ○ Data Quality is a new set of AI tools that automatically finds and fixes problems in customer data. No more manual clean-up. ○ Flexible CRM Views allows for new data visualizations -- boards, calendars, maps, or tables -- so teams can view data however works for them. ○ Conversational and Intent Enrichment automatically enriches records with HubSpot's proprietary data, unstructured data like calls, emails and support tickets, and intent signals like website visits. ○ Smart Insights surfaces the most important patterns and trends, delivering actionable recommendations without digging through reports. Enable your people Embedded AI features across HubSpot's customer platform help humans focus on strategy, creativity, and closing deals. This is AI that's built into the workflows teams already use. No context switching and no data gaps. Marketing, sales, and service teams get intelligence where they need it to help them grow. ○ Segments + Personalization unlock dynamic, AI-driven segmentation that grows with your business, with new powerful features for audience targeting that is truly personal. ○ In Marketing Studio, marketers can work with AI to generate a full set of campaign assets and optimize their campaign, all from a collaborative canvas. ○ AI-Powered Email uses your CRM data to create deeply personal messages for individual contacts for higher conversion. ○ AI Engine Optimization (AEO) Strategy helps optimize how your brand appears in LLM answers. ○ AI-powered Quote Creation drafts quotes automatically based on conversations and deal context, saving reps time and accelerating the deal closing process. ○ The new Closing Agent is available 24/7 to answer buyers' product and pricing questions. ○ Quote Engagement notifies reps when a prospect views or shares a quote. ○ Flexible Approvals route quotes to the right people based on custom criteria. ○ The new Product Builder makes it easy to create everything from simple fixed-price items to complex, tiered structures and bundles. Build your AI team New Breeze Agents, Marketplace, and Studio give GTM teams everything they need to build, customize, and deploy AI teammates -- all powered by unified data for complete business context that point solutions can't offer. ○ Data Agent is a new AI agent from HubSpot that researches and answers custom questions about customers like which prospects are using competitive products. ○ Customer Agent is your AI front office concierge that instantly answers questions, resolves issues, and turns conversations into opportunities. ○ Prospecting Agent is a 24/7 BDR that understands your business, monitors prospects for buying signals, researches target accounts, personalizes outreach, and engages at the perfect moment. ○ Custom Assistants take that a step further by allowing you to create specialized experts for specific business needs. ○ Breeze Studio is where you manage and customize Agents and Custom Assistants to work for your specific business needs. Today, HubSpot also announced a new HubSpot connector for Gemini.**** Now customers can bring their HubSpot context to Gemini to surface insights, and generate content to be actioned back in HubSpot. Visit the Fall 2025 Spotlight to learn more. *Data Bricks, Get more value from unstructured data **Data Hub replaces Operations Hub. ***HubSpot proprietary data ****Available in closed alpha now and available to all joint customers soon