HubSpot throws cheeky shade at Salesforce during Breeze AI launch

Customer relationship management platform HubSpot is ramping up its AI offerings for SMEs with the launch of Breeze AI. It also took the opportunity to throw a subtle bit of shade at Salesforce – with both companies running their yearly conferences simultaneously.

Breeze AI is being positioned by the company as a way to integrate AI across customer interactions without a steep learning curve.

In introducing the platform, HubSpot’s executive vice president of product Andy Pitre took a playful jab at competitors like Salesforce, quipping, “You don’t need to be an Einstein to use AI”.

Einstein One is Salesforce’s own AI offering, which was first introduced at Dreamforce in 2023. And the SaaS sass was probably fair. Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff used his own keynote earlier this week to take aim at Microsoft’s Copilot, referring to it as ‘Clippy 2.0’.

The launch of Breeze comes at a time when Australian businesses are facing significant financial pressure.

According to HubSpot research, 40% of companies in Australia cite rising costs as their biggest challenge, while 20% say they haven’t even started discussing AI adoption.

“Increasing costs have resulted in Australian businesses doing it tough,” HubSpot’s vice president and managing director of JAPAC Dan Bognar said.

He also pointed out Australian employees often switch between 17 or more different applications to manage customer interactions – leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities to build deeper customer relationships.

HubSpot is offering Breeze as a solution, which integrates over 80 AI features into its customer platform.

Pitre tied this back to adoption, saying, “Businesses will really start seeing the full potential [of AI] when it’s easy to use”.

“The idea is to take the complexity out of AI.”

Built to be a breeze

One of Breeze’s core offerings is Breeze Copilot, an AI assistant that can automate tasks across sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

During a demonstration, Pitre demonstrated how a sales representative could ask Copilot to find SaaS companies in Boston with a simple prompt, receiving results in seconds.

Copilot can be used across desktop and mobile and can also automate follow-ups and research tasks, drawing on the customer data stored in HubSpot’s Smart CRM.

HubSpot also got aboard the AI agent train in a big way – and I’ll dig into that more in my Neural Notes column on Friday.

Some of these agents include Content Agent and Social Media Agent, designed to handle tasks like generating blog posts, social media updates and case studies.

For sales teams, the Prospecting Agent helps to engage leads by researching and crafting personalised messages based on intent signals from HubSpot’s CRM.

Similarly, the Customer Agent assists service teams by responding to common customer queries around the clock, allowing human agents to focus on more complex support issues.

HubSpot is also going after AI-powered data enrichment with a product called Breeze Intelligence. This allows users to pull detailed information from a database of over 200 million company and buyer profiles, which can then be used to boost existing customer records in HubSpot’s CRM.

The idea is for this to create a more comprehensive view of customers, leading to better targeting and personalisation.

One feature Pitre highlighted during his keynote was Breeze Intelligence’s ability to automatically shorten forms — removing unnecessary fields if the system already knows certain details about a prospect.

“Wouldn’t it be a shame to lose out on a qualified lead all because your form was too long?” Pitre said.

“We’ve all been there, right? We’ve all abandoned something online because we get to the form and say, there is no way I’m filling this thing out.”

In terms of pricing, Breeze AI is baked into HubSpot’s ‘hubs’. This means the end cost depends on each business’ subscription. However, there are free trials available.

Breeze Intelligence is a little different, working on a credit-based pricing model and requires an existing paid product. According to HubSpot’s website, 100 Breeze Intelligence credits start at US$45 a month.

Breeze AI is currently in beta with a full rollout to follow.

The author travelled to InBound in Boston as a guest of HubSpot.

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