In his INBOUND 2024 keynote, HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah presented a bold thesis: "Agents are the new apps".

This briefing provides a strategic analysis of HubSpot's new platform, Agent.AI, and its vision for an agent-centric ecosystem where everyone will not only use agents but also build them.

The key intelligence from our deep dive:

• The Agent Platform Strategy: An analysis of Agent.AI, pitched as the "number one professional network for AI agents". The platform aims to create a marketplace where users can find, use, and build agents, positioning HubSpot to be the "App Store" for a new generation of AI-powered business tools, with the vision that "there's an agent for that".
• No-Code Democratization: A breakdown of the "Agent Builder" tool, a drag-and-drop interface designed to allow non-developers to create their own AI agents. This strategy aims to rapidly scale the ecosystem by empowering a wide range of users to build solutions for any marketing, sales, or service use case.
• Underlying Technology Drivers: An assessment of the AI advancements enabling this vision. Shah highlights that AI models are doubling in capability every six months, far outpacing Moore's Law. The exceptional reasoning ability of new models like GPT-o1 is cited as a key factor that allows agents to take on more sophisticated, multi-step goals.
• Human-Agent Collaboration Model: An examination of the proposed future of work, where teams are hybrids of humans and AI agents. Shah's framework posits that AI does not reduce human value but raises it by "automat[ing] the mundane and amplify[ing] the magic" that stems from unique human experiences.

HubSpot's Agent.AI represents a significant strategic bet on agents as the next dominant software paradigm, aiming to build both the network and the tools for a community-driven ecosystem.

This analysis is independently produced and is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, HubSpot or its participants.