News
The Gist
- HubSpot introduces AI-powered tools. HubSpot's new AI brand, Breeze and Breeze Intelligence, are enhancing personalization, lead generation and customer data integration across the platform.
- Breeze Intelligence unifies customer data. Breeze Intelligence integrates first-party and third-party data, making it easier for marketers to automate campaigns and improve personalization with enriched data insights, HubSpot says.
- Google acquisition talks fell through. Google's potential acquisition of HubSpot was called off, allowing HubSpot to maintain independence and focus on its AI-driven strategy, with some experts expressing relief over the missed deal.
BOSTON — HubSpot jumped into the artificial intelligence party today with a new AI brand that powers its customer platform: Hubs, Smart CRM and the ecosystem.
The news comes as HubSpot takes center stage at its annual INBOUND conference this week here at the Boston Exhibition and Convention Center. The late-summer marketing, sales and customer experience technology showcase traditionally draws thousands of attendees beyond the HubSpot customer; such as marketers who want education on the concept of inbound marketing, which HubSpot has championed for decades.
But where does AI enter the mix? Does it enable the inbound marketing concept? And where and how can it fuel customer success?
“HubSpot’s not missing a beat, just refining their game plan,” said Ace Bhattacharjya, CEO and founder of medicalrecords.com and a HubSpot customer. “Their latest product updates are solid. HubSpot is giving marketers a new playbook with AI-powered tools like Breeze Intelligence and enhanced Marketing Hub features. They’re keeping things simple for SMBs while stepping up personalization and lead generation.”
What Is HubSpot's Breeze All About?
Here’s what HubSpot is touting today across the Charles River from its headquarters in Cambridge:
- Breeze Intelligence: HubSpot’s new, native data enrichment and buyer intent solution. HubSpot officials say it unifies data from marketing emails, sales calls, support tickets and website interactions on a single record in the Smart CRM. Breeze Intelligence connects first-party customer data in HubSpot with third-party data from the internet. Features include one-click data enrichment, buyer intent signals and dynamic form shortening. It stems from over 200 million profiles across buyers and companies, refreshed every 30 days.
- Breeze: HubSpot’s new AI brand that powers the entire customer platformHubs, Smart CRM and the ecosystem. This includes an all-new Copilot, four Agents (Breeze social, content, prospecting and customer agents) and 80-plus features across the platform — powered by Breeze Intelligence.
- Updates to Marketing Hub and Content Hub: These updates enable marketers to execute full campaigns — from finding an audience to measuring impact — more efficiently. Key features include Content Remix for video, AI-powered workflows, personalized email subscriptions and enhanced lead scoring. Integrations with platforms like Amplitude and Google further optimize campaign performance and insights.
“As you probably imagine, data is so hard to get,” Karen Ng, HubSpot’s GM of Smart CRM, told CMSWire in an interview before the conference. “Now it's siloed and disconnected across a whole bunch of different things. It's scattered across the Internet. And businesses have a really hard time getting that full picture. It's all disconnected. So that's the big reason we created Breeze Intelligence.”
Users will be able to take customer data inside HubSpot’s Smart CRM and understand customers better for things like personalization, marketing automation and campaign journeys and get access to better data to feed AI, according to Ng.
“Your AI,” she said, “is only as good as the data it's trained on.”
Can HubSpot Stand Out in AI World?
Predrag (PJ) Jakovljevic, principal industry analyst for Technology Evaluation Centers, said at first glance Breeze Intelligence seems interesting. He found it somewhat similar to Salesforce's Data Cloud, given that data is critical for AI, business intelligence and the inevitable integration of AI customer service agents.
HubSpot's AI sounds similar to many of its competitors, but it seems HubSpot is heavily emphasizing that Breeze will be easy for customers to use and that they will quickly see value from it, according to Laurie McCabe, co-founder and partner for SMB Group.
“Since HubSpot caters to SMBs, this is essential,” McCabe added. “In some cases, AI in competitive solutions seem to be more complex to access and use, and AI features aren't fully available in editions aimed at small businesses.”
Francois Ajenstat, chief product officer at HubSpot partner Amplitude, agrees HubSpot’s pushing for ease of use. He added the company wants to offer customers fast time to value and create a unified customer data platform. That strategy, he said, is “spot on and is the right one to drive customer success, accelerate growth and create the foundation to make AI successful.”
“They also realize the importance of their partner ecosystem and focusing on making it easy for their customers and partners to extend and continue to add value to their platform," Ajenstat said.
Related Article: HubSpot and TikTok Announce CRM Integration for Enhanced Lead Generation
Was Google a Missed Opportunity for HubSpot?
Lest we forget, HubSpot’s had an interesting year. Top of mind? Google.
In April, Google parent company Alphabet was in talks to acquire HubSpot.
What would have blown away Google's largest acquisition at $12.5 billion, when it acquired Motorola Mobility for its Android play in 2011, never materialized, however. HubSpot, which went public in 2014, had a market cap closing in on $35 billion then, but as of this week was around $25 billion.
That acquisition would have rocked the adtech and martech world, but it went for naught about three months later as the mega-deal collapsed.
Missed opportunity?
“The Google rumors? Mixed bag,” said Bhattacharjya. “Sure, integrating with Google Ads or GMB (Google My Business) would’ve been huge, but Google’s baggage — like the way they handled Google Domains — makes me glad HubSpot stayed independent. The legal mess would’ve been a distraction.”
Jakovljevic added that perhaps Adobe could benefit from having HubSpot, adding, “Just thinking aloud. I haven't heard any rumors.”
HubSpot's Inbound and AI Vision
And what about that inbound marketing strategy?
Bhattacharjya, long in the trenches of trying to capture customers and prospects through marketing and customer experience tools like HubSpot’s, told CMSWire inbound is changing fast as we’re awash in AI-generated content.
“It’s harder than ever to stand out, generate leads or be heard above the noise,” Bhattacharjya said. “SEO is brutal, and Google’s algorithm updates just keep adding pressure. The paid world isn’t much easier, but HubSpot’s updates to the Marketing and Content Hubs aim to simplify things for marketers.”
He also praised HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah’s vision for AI as “next-level.” His personal project, Agent.ai, is “brilliant and shows his passion for the space.”
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The reality at the moment? AI’s in a major exploration phase.
“HubSpot’s been smart with AI integration,” Bhattacharjya added, “but I still find myself jumping between other tools like ChatGPT, MidJourney and Claude for specialized needs. They could benefit from tighter integration with these.”
