HubSpot and Salesforce are ramping up efforts to lead the rapidly evolving agentic CRM market, as businesses increasingly adopt AI-powered agents to automate sales, marketing and customer service workflows.
At its Spring 2026 Spotlight event, HubSpot unveiled a series of AI-focused updates aimed at enterprise customers. The company introduced the Agentic Engagement Object (AEO), a new contextual hub designed to surface relevant insights and recommend next actions across sales and marketing functions.
HubSpot also launched Smart Deal Progression, revamped its Prospecting Agent, expanded its Customer Agent, and upgraded its Breeze Assistant, which is trained on the company’s “Loop Marketing” methodology. Three Breeze agents — Customer, Prospecting and Data — are now generally available, while Company Research and Customer Health agents remain in beta testing.
Meanwhile, Salesforce reported strong growth for its Agentforce platform. The company said Agentforce annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached $800 million, marking a 169% year-on-year increase. Salesforce also disclosed that it has closed 29,000 customer deals and delivered 2.4 billion “agentic work units” to date.
The company is positioning Agentforce as a core component of what it calls the “Agentic Enterprise.” During the quarter, Salesforce expanded Agentforce for Financial Services with voice capabilities, enabling AI agents to handle common banking and collections inquiries without requiring additional staff.
Industry data suggests growing demand for agent-based AI systems. According to Futurum’s Q1 2026 Enterprise Software survey, 39% of enterprises expect generative AI to be delivered through task-automating agents. Separately, research from Gong found that 96% of revenue leaders expect their teams to be using AI tools by the end of the year.
Analysts say the competition is shifting beyond traditional CRM functions toward platforms that can act as systems of record for AI agents operating across the revenue technology stack.
However, experts caution that the effectiveness of agentic CRM platforms will depend heavily on the quality of underlying business data. While AI agents can automate tasks and provide recommendations, poor data quality and unclear workflows could limit their value and lead to inaccurate outcomes.
As adoption accelerates, the next 18 months are expected to be critical in determining which CRM platforms emerge as leaders in the agent-driven enterprise software market.
