UNBOUND 2026 is in full swing in HubSpot’s native Boston, Mass., and thousands of attendees from around the world gathered to learn about the now and near future of the HubSpot ecosystem. Kuno Creative’s Jeremy Ball and Brad Garverick are in attendance, getting a firsthand look at the newest developments and meeting with some of our clients.
The kickoff keynote session always centers around HubSpot’s product spotlight, debuting new features, enhancements and value for users. Wednesday’s Spotlight presentation featured plenty of new ideas, revamped and reimagined HubSpot components and unveiled an expanded partnership with OpenAI around ChatGPT ads.
HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan offered a prelude to Spotlight with a data-informed, counter-intuitive premise: the organizations getting the best results from AI are using AI less, particularly on the generative front, and with far more intentionality. Per Rangan, of the 90 percent of organizations HubSpot polled, only six percent could say that their AI investments resulted in significant positive impact.
Admittedly, this is an unsubtle pivot from a year ago in San Francisco, when [then known as] INBOUND locked-in on AI and “the Loop.” The data-informed element mentioned above is foundational to this pivot: instead of AI everything (“maxxing”), Rangan proposed focusing AI investment and efforts in developing context – prioritizing pipeline, campaign analysis and commonalities in customer feedback – toward outcomes: ushering in what she called “the outcomes era.” Their research bears this out – the most impactful uses from the organizations best-utilizing AI come from analysis and reporting, not from developing content or messaging materials.
Chief Product and Technology Officer Duncan Lennox led the Spotlight itself. His stated focus is on customer satisfaction and, perhaps sensing the shifting winds of public opinion on AI, trust, framing product enhancements and new initiatives within this rubric. Focusing on the HubSpot CRM and building context, Lennox unveiled the self-updating CRM, a major step forward from having to set up automations or manual entry and updating records, all while letting the user maintain control over this “Growth Context.”
Growth Context includes a completely rebuilt Breeze Assistant; Lennox asked, “Instead of needing a million tools to do one thing, what if you had one tool to do a million things?” Where the original Breeze was essentially bolted-on to legacy tools, this new engine is designed precisely with the self-updating CRM in mind.
Breeze Assistant and Growth Context include a reinvented Marketing Studio, bringing the ability to surface opportunities, research strategic data and develop full campaigns into a central, collaborative source, much as Sales Workspace has since its introduction in spring 2025. New agents – Campaign Agent, Content Agent, Nurture Agent and Agent Builder – provide a fast-track from identifying obstacles or opportunities toward executable solutions to lift demand and brand awareness.
Breeze is also the engine underneath sales enablement: pulling rich context and verifiable answers, Prospecting Agent, Deal Progression, data-forward and contextual email messaging, even instant reporting and deliverable assets for stakeholders via PDF or artifacts. These functions also crossover into fully portable functionality for the first time, with Mobile Notetaker keeping deal and contact records current in the moment. Revenue Agent acts as HubSpot’s first effort in automating and facilitating accounts payable and collections.
Lennox called all of this a “glow-up,” but these releases potentially represent a wholesale reinvention of what HubSpot is capable of for both sales and marketing professionals in the environment, as well as back office revenue professionals and executives.
HubSpot also reaffirmed its status as the first platform to natively integrate with ChatGPT Ads, particularly toward attribution. Lennox announced the AI Growth Bundle for new HubSpot customers in partnership with OpenAI: HubSpot Starter is up to 65% off with discounted seats, along with buy one, get one seat free in ChatGPT Business for 12 months, and a $750 match on ad spend on ChatGPT Ads.
The accredited HubSpot experts here at Kuno are already exploring what these new features can do for our clients, and how this new outcomes era informs our human-led, AI-accelerated philosophy. In many respects, HubSpot’s proposed evolution represents a supercharged Inbound approach: better meeting the need for jobs to be done, delivering value at the right times for the right reasons and placing the human connection at the heart of every touchpoint.
After all, the best outcome from every effort in digital sales or marketing is genuine relationship.
Brent Sirvio
