Marketing software maker HubSpot at its annual Inbound customer conference on Wednesday will launch new artificial intelligence tools and agents. As with many software companies, the revenue impact from generative AI remains to be seen for HubSpot as its platform strategy evolves.
Adding customer data management capabilities to its platform has been a focus of HubSpot. At Inbound, the company will unveil a new data hub and more goal-oriented AI agents directed at marketing, sales and customer service.
HubSpot's AI strategy focuses in part on "context," helping customers use proprietary business data in a controlled way to build AI agent apps. At Inbound, HubSpot also highlighted hybrid AI workforces. According to the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm, a hybrid human-AI team is only as good as the data that powers it.
"The keynote at Inbound highlighted how traditional search and inbound lead generation is being disrupted by AI, as 60% of searches now don't result in website clicks," said TD Cowen analyst Derrick Wood in a report. "This is materially impacting top-of-funnel methods, but content marketing remains critical and HubSpot outlined a new playbook it is introducing in its business-to-business Marketing Cloud, including its new AI engine optimization solution to help customers be more visible in (Google) AI Overviews."
"HubSpot's new data hub aims to deliver a more robust data layer to stitch together disparate data sources in order to power context, orchestration and action and transform its platforms into an argentic customer system," added Wood.
Meanwhile, HubSpot's AI pricing strategy has been evolving. Like many software makers, HubSpot includes AI tools and agents for free in per-seat licenses. In June, though, HubSpot began charging users of Customer Agent consumption-based fees based on credit usage.
Also, HubSpot recently released a "deep research" connector for OpenAI's ChatGPT — a natural language tool that lets ChatGPT analyze customer data.
In an interview, Head of Product Karen Ng talked about the software maker's strategy.
HubSpot Stock: Inbound AI News
IBD: What's HubSpot's AI message to customers at Inbound this year?
Ng: What we want to do is help our customers through the AI era and we believe in hybrid teams — humans and (AI) agents. And so we think of our product strategy that way: To create the best hybrid team requires (data) context. That's why we're investing so much in creating context. It requires giving people tools to help them unlock creativity and personal reach and it requires giving them a set of tools that help humans be supercharged with AI and agents.
IBD: On Wall Street there seems to be concern about per-seat business models if productivity gains lead to fewer employees.
Ng: Our philosophy stays really the same as it always has been, which is we'll focus first on value before monetizing. So we focus on value in our agents before we move to monetizing it. Customer Agent is one of our flagship agents. It resolves over 50% of support tickets today. In June, we moved to monetizing that through (consumption) credits and work that is done. The more you use (Customer Agent), the more it helps resolve support tickets, the more value it adds.
So you can think of our pricing model right now as hybrid. We still have a seats model and those seats have different tiers, and then we have a credit consumption model on top of each of the seats.
IBD: Do you expect HubSpot to stick with a hybrid model or at some point lean more consumption-based?
Ng: We recognize that from a seats model perspective, you may change the number of seats you have as AI causes more productivity with teams. Our monetization is tied directly to the value we deliver, and so there's really no ceiling there. One other thing I'll add is that especially in the world of AI, the concept of user permissions and what an agent is allowed to see is incredibly important. Trust is kind of at the heart of our AI strategy.
We believe in a hybrid approach. There is something we call personal AI, and that is the ability to supercharge human work. It is an assistant that kind of helps and supercharges humans today. That Breeze assistant is included in every one of our seats. That assistant can do a lot of different kinds of work. So, for example, being able to create a workflow in a natural language. We are still exploring how we translate that as value when AI augments humans.
Connecting To ChatGPT
IBD: HubSpot recently announced "connectors" into ChatGPT as well as Claude. What does that accomplish?
Ng: ChatGPT itself has over 700 million users. That is nearly 10% of global humanity, and now HubSpot is kind of a default connector in ChatGPT for everyone available to use. However, it requires a seat, because we want to respect user permissions (to access data). As long as you have permissions to access (data), which is done through a seat (license), you can use the connectors. We've seen over 20,000 users connect to ChatGPT.
IBD: On Wall Street there also seems to be a feeling that OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies are going to emerge as competitors in the enterprise market against software incumbents. Do you see that happening?
Ng: I do not see them as direct competitors. I believe that as in every tech disruption, it's possible that they will come into different spaces, and we see that even with the verticals that they do. But it is a platform and operating system shift more so than a direct competitor.
HubSpot Stock Analysis
Meanwhile, HubSpot stock has retreated 32% in 2025.
HubSpot's IBD Composite Rating is 53 out of a best-possible 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup. The best stocks tend to have a Composite Rating of 90 or better.
In addition, HubSpot stock has an Accumulation/Distribution Rating of E. The rating analyzes price and volume changes in a stock over the past 13 weeks of trading. On an A+ to E scale, the rating measures institutional buying and selling in a stock. E means heavy selling.
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