10-K
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
c
FORM 10-K
(MARK ONE)
FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2025
OR
FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM TO
Commission File Number 001-36680
HubSpot, Inc.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
Two Canal Park
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02141
(Address of principal executive offices)
(888) 482-7768
(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Title of each class Trading symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered
Common Stock, par value $0.001 per share HUBS New York Stock Exchange
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None.
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☒ NO ☐
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act. YES ☐ No ☒
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes ☒ NO ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files). Yes ☒ NO ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act:
Large accelerated filer ☒ Accelerated filer ☐
Non-accelerated filer ☐ Smaller reporting company ☐
Emerging growth company ☐
If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the Registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal controls over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report YES ☒ NO ☐
If securities are registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act, indicate by check mark whether the financial statements of the registrant included in the filing reflect the correction of an error to previously issued financial statements. YES ☐ NO ☒
Indicate by check mark whether any of those error corrections are restatements that required a recovery analysis of incentive-based compensation received by any of the registrant’s executive officers during the relevant recovery period pursuant to §240.10D-1(b). YES ☐ NO ☒
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). YES ☐ NO ☒
The aggregate market value of common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant, based on the closing price of the registrant’s common stock on June 30, 2025, as reported by the New York Stock Exchange on such date was approximately $28,297,314,702. Shares of the registrant’s common stock held by each executive officer, director and holder of 5% or more of the outstanding common stock have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This calculation does not reflect a determination that certain persons are affiliates of the registrant for any other purpose.
On February 6, 2026, the registrant had 52,740,536 shares of common stock outstanding.
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DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Portions of the registrant’s definitive Proxy Statement for its 2026 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Such Proxy Statement will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year to which this report relates. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part of this Form 10-K.
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HUBSPOT, INC.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page No.
PART I
ITEM 1. Business 7
ITEM 1A. Risk Factors 16
ITEM 1B. Unresolved Staff Comments 44
ITEM 1C. Cybersecurity 44
ITEM 2. Properties 45
ITEM 3. Legal Proceedings 45
ITEM 4. Mine Safety Disclosures 45
PART II
ITEM 6. [Reserved] 47
ITEM 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk 62
ITEM 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data 63
ITEM 9A. Controls and Procedures 101
ITEM 9B. Other Information 102
ITEM 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions that Prevent Inspections 103
PART III
ITEM 10. Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance 104
ITEM 11. Executive Compensation 104
ITEM 14. Principal Accounting Fees and Services 104
PART IV
ITEM 15. Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules 105
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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and these statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “could,” “intends,” “target,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. Forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K include, but are not limited to, statements about:
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our future financial and operational performance, including our expectations regarding our revenue, cost of revenue, gross margin and operating expenses;
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maintaining and expanding our customer base and increasing our average subscription revenue per customer;
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the impact of competition in our industry and innovation by our competitors, including as a result of new or better use of evolving artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies;
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our anticipated growth and expectations regarding our ability to manage our future growth;
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our expectations regarding the potential impact of geo-political conflicts, inflationary pressures, tariffs and trade restrictions, foreign currency movement, macroeconomic stability, and catastrophic events, on our business, the broader economy, our workforce and operations, the markets in which we and our partners and customers operate, and our ability to forecast future financial performance;
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our anticipated areas of investments, including sales and marketing, research and development, including with respect to AI and machine learning, customer service and support, data center infrastructure and service capabilities, and expectations relating to such investments;
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our predictions about industry and market trends;
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limitations on us due to obligations we have under the credit facility;
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our ability to anticipate and address the evolution of technology and the technological needs of our customers, to roll-out upgrades to our existing software platform and to develop new and enhanced applications to meet the needs of our customers, including with respect to AI and machine learning;
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our ability to maintain our brand and marketing, selling and servicing thought leadership position;
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the impact of our corporate culture and our ability to attract, hire and retain necessary qualified employees to expand our operations;
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the anticipated effect on our business of litigation to which we are or may become a party;
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our ability to successfully acquire and integrate companies and assets;
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the impact of our 2026 Share Repurchase Program;
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our plans regarding declaring or paying cash dividends in the foreseeable future; and
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our ability to stay abreast of new or modified laws and regulations that currently apply or become applicable to our business both in the United States and internationally.
We caution you that the foregoing list may not contain all of the forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors described in “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The results, events and circumstances
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reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
The forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.
We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures, or investments we may make.
In this Annual Report on Form 10-K, the terms “HubSpot,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to HubSpot, Inc. and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
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Risk Factor Summary
The risk factors detailed in Item 1A entitled “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the risks that we believe are material to our investors and a reader should carefully consider them. Those risks are not all of the risks we face and other factors not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also affect our business if they occur. The following is a summary of the risk factors detailed in Item 1A:
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We are dependent upon customer renewals, the addition of new customers, increased revenue from existing customers and the continued growth of the market for a customer platform.
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We face significant competition from both established and new companies in the software market in which we operate, which may harm our ability to add new customers, retain existing customers and grow our business.
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Failure to effectively develop and expand our marketing, sales, customer service, operations, and content management capabilities could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our platform.
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If we fail to adapt and respond effectively to rapidly changing technology (including AI and machine learning), evolving industry standards and changing customer needs or requirements, our customer platform may become less competitive.
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Our ability to introduce new products and features, including new products and features that utilize AI is dependent on adequate research and development resources. If we do not adequately fund our research and development efforts, we may not be able to compete effectively and our business and operating results may be harmed.
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We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates that could adversely affect our financial results.
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Economic uncertainty, including from changes in trade policies, trade wars, tariffs or other trade restrictions or the threat of such actions, may lead to decreased demand for our products and services and otherwise harm our business and results of operations.
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Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center providers could impair our ability to deliver our platform to our customers, resulting in customer dissatisfaction, damage to our reputation, loss of customers, limited growth, and reduction in revenue.
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If our customer platform has outages or fails due to defects or similar problems, and if we fail to correct any defect or other software problems, we could lose customers, become subject to service performance or warranty claims or incur significant costs.
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If our or our customers’ security measures are compromised or unauthorized access to data of our customers or their customers is otherwise obtained, our customer platform may be perceived as not being secure, our customers may be harmed and may curtail or cease their use of our platform, our reputation may be damaged and we may incur significant liabilities.
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We have a history of losses and may not become consistently profitable or maintain or increase profitability in the future.
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We may experience quarterly fluctuations in our operating results due to a number of factors, which makes our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results to fall below expectations or our guidance.
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If we do not accurately predict subscription renewal rates or otherwise fail to forecast our revenue accurately, or if we fail to match our expenditures with corresponding revenue, our operating results could be adversely affected.
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Our ability to raise capital in the future may be limited, and our failure to raise capital when needed could prevent us from growing.
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PART 1
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Overview
We provide an agentic customer platform that helps marketing, sales, and customer service teams drive business growth. We deliver seamless connection for customer-facing teams with a unified platform that includes three layers: Artificial Intelligence ("AI")-powered agents and engagement hubs, a Smart customer relationship management product (“CRM”), and a connected ecosystem supporting the customer platform with a marketplace of integrations, templates, expert partners, a community network, and an academy of educational content.
Our AI-powered agents and engagement Hubs that enable companies to attract, engage, and delight customers throughout the customer lifecycle include Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations, Content and Commerce. The Smart CRM is the foundational context layer that combines customer data with AI to power the entire customer platform with unified customer profiles and tools to manage and govern your team and business processes.
We focus on selling to mid-market business-to-business (“B2B”) companies, which we define as companies that have between 2 and 2,000 employees, and aim to be the best at applying AI to help them grow. We primarily sell our customer platform on a subscription basis. In 2025, our total revenue was $3.1 billion and we generated a net income of $45.9 million. As of December 31, 2025, we had 8,882 full-time employees and 288,706 Customers, as defined in our Key Business Metrics in Item 7, of varying sizes in more than 135 countries.
Our company was formed as a limited liability company in Delaware on April 4, 2005. We converted to a Delaware corporation on June 7, 2007. Our principal executive offices are located at Two Canal Park, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and our main telephone number is 888-482-7768. Our website address is https://www.hubspot.com. Information contained on or that can be accessed through our website does not constitute part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and inclusions of our website address in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are inactive textual references only.
The HubSpot Approach
Our customer platform features a central database of lead and customer interactions and integrated applications designed to help businesses build their presence online, attract prospects across channels, convert prospects into leads, close leads into customers, transact with those customers, and delight them so they become promoters of those businesses.
Designed to Help Companies Grow Better.Our customer platform was crafted from the ground up to enable businesses to transform their marketing, sales, services, operations, commerce and content management playbook to meet the demands of customers today. Our customer platform includes a system of record for maintaining a unified view of the customer experience, a system of engagement for efficiently engaging customers through search engine optimization (“SEO”), and answer engine optimization (“AEO”), AI-powered content creation, web content, social, blogging, email, marketing automation, messaging, support ticketing, knowledge base, conversation routing, video hosting, deal progression, prospecting, data enrichment, and an end-to-end commerce solution which enables customers to use AI-powered configure-price-quote (“CPQ”) capabilities, automated billing, and payment processing to streamline the end-to-end quote-to-cash process with fewer tools. Our AI agents extend the platform with AI teammates that do real work, like researching accounts, enriching data, answering support questions, and qualifying leads.
Ease of Use of a Single, Extensible Platform that Drives Fast Time to Value. We provide a set of integrated applications on a common platform, which offers businesses ease of use and simplicity. Our customer platform has one login, one user interface and one unified customer view. Our customer platform starts free and grows with our customers. It is designed to scale its power and technical sophistication without losing its ease-of-use. In addition to being a comprehensive suite itself, our customer platform seamlessly integrates with hundreds of external applications, making it easy to extend the functionality of our customer platform and customize it for any business. This enables our customers to get work done quickly, driving immediate impact.
Power of a Unified Customer View. At the core of our customer platform is a unified data platform for each business that captures its lead and customer activity throughout the customer lifecycle – this is our Smart CRM. Our Smart CRM uses AI to automatically enrich customer records, maintain data quality, and provide unified customer context that powers personalized experiences across all engagement channels. Our Smart CRM also creates a unified timeline incorporating all the interactions across the business with a particular customer. In contrast to many CRM suites which are cobbled together, we have crafted a set of core functionalities, including reporting, content, messaging, data, AI assistance and automation, which run across our engagement Hubs.
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Scalability. Our customer platform is designed and built to serve a large number of customers with demanding use cases. Our customer platform currently processes billions of data points each week, and we use leading global cloud infrastructure providers and our own automation technology to dynamically allocate capacity to handle processing workloads of all sizes. We have built our customer platform on modern, scalable distributed technologies. We built the infrastructure to support hundreds of microservices and can easily add new features and capabilities to the customer platform. We utilize a variety of open-source distributed systems including HBase, Kafka, Vitess, and Elasticsearch to scale our data collection and processing. Our scalability gives us flexibility for future growth and enables us to service a large variety of businesses of different sizes across different industries.
Extensible and Open Architecture. Our customer platform features a variety of open application programming interfaces (“APIs”) that allows easy integration of our platform with other applications. We enable our customers to connect our platform to their other applications, such as ecommerce, event management and videoconferencing applications. By connecting third-party applications, our customers can leverage our centralized database to perform additional functions and analysis.
Our Competitive Strengths
We believe that our market leadership position is based on the following key strengths:
Leading Platform. We have designed and built a world-class customer platform. We believe our customers choose our customer platform over others because of its powerful, integrated, and easy-to-use applications. We built HubSpot on a single, unified, and intuitive platform, which we believe contrasts positively with many other CRM suites. We are also investing in powerful AI capabilities and agents across all our engagement hubs and the Smart CRM in order to strengthen the customer platform even further, ensuring that customers can work smarter.
Customer-centric DNA. We have a company culture that prioritizes serving customers and meeting their needs to help them grow better. This informs the product features we offer, the way we go-to-market across our engagement Hubs and also how we price and package our offerings. This customer-centricity is a key differentiator and enables us to continuously innovate.
Market Leadership and Strong Brand. We are a recognized thought leader in the cloud-based marketing, sales, customer service, operations, content management, and commerce software industry with a leading brand. Our founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, wrote the best-selling marketing book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs. We have now pioneered a fundamentally different way of doing marketing in an AI era with “Loop Marketing”. Our customer platform experience attracts, engages, and delights customers by being more relevant, more helpful, more personalized, and less interruptive than traditional marketing and sales tactics. Our INBOUND event is one of the largest marketing and sales industry conference events. In 2025, we had over 13,000 registered in-person attendees and over 550,000 livestreams and on-demand views across our ecosystem.
Large and Growing Solutions Partner Program.A Solutions Partner is a service provider that helps businesses with strategy, execution, and implementation of go-to-market activities and technology solutions. Our Solutions Partners promote our brand and offer our customer platform to their customers. Solutions Partners and customers referred to us by our Solutions Partners represented approximately 25% of our Customers as of December 31, 2025, and approximately 49% of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025. These Solutions Partners help us to promote the vision of the HubSpot experience, efficiently reach new mid-market businesses at scale, and provide our mutual customers with more diverse and higher-touch services.
Freemium Pricing Strategy. Our freemium model attracts customers who begin using our customer platform through our free products and then upgrade to our paid engagement Hubs. Through our freemium products, our customers are able to receive value from HubSpot before converting to a paid product or engaging with sales.
Mid-Market Focus. We believe we have significant competitive advantages reaching mid-market businesses and efficiently reach this market at scale as a result of our go-to-market approach, freemium pricing strategy, and our Solutions Partner channel.
Powerful Network Effects. We have built a large and growing ecosystem around our customer platform and company. Tens of thousands of our Customers integrate third-party applications with our customer platform. We believe this ecosystem drives more businesses and professionals to embrace HubSpot playbook. As our engaged audience grows, more Solutions Partners collaborate with us, more third-party developers integrate their applications with our customer platform, and more professionals complete our certification programs, all of which generate increasing value to our customers and help to drive more businesses to adopt our customer platform.
Our Growth Strategy
The key elements to our growth strategy are:
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Grow Our Customer Base. The market for our customer platform is large and underserved. Mid-market businesses are particularly underserved by existing point application vendors and often lack sufficient resources to implement complex solutions. Our all-in-one customer platform allows mid-market businesses to efficiently adopt and execute an effective strategy to help them expand and grow. We will continue to leverage our go-to-market approach, freemium pricing strategy and our network of Solutions Partners to keep growing our business.
Increase Revenue from Existing Customers. With 288,706 Customers in more than 135 countries spanning many industries, we believe we have a significant opportunity to increase revenue from our existing customers. We plan to increase revenue from our existing customers by expanding their use of our customer platform by upselling additional offerings and features, including our end-to-end commerce solution, adding additional users, and cross-selling our customer platform to existing customers through touchless or low touch in-product purchases. Our scalable pricing model allows us to capture more spend as our customers grow, increase the number of their customers and prospects managed on our customer platform, and offer additional functionality available from our higher price tiers and add-ons, providing us with a substantial opportunity to increase the lifetime value of our customer relationships.
Keep Expanding Internationally. There is a significant opportunity for our customer platform outside of the United States. As of December 31, 2025, approximately 53% of our Customers were located outside of the United States and these Customers generated approximately 48% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2025. We sell to those international Customers from our U.S., European, Asia Pacific, and South American based operations. We intend to grow our presence in international markets through additional investments in local sales, marketing and professional service capabilities, as well as by leveraging our Solutions Partner network. We have significant website traffic from regions outside the United States, and we believe that markets outside the United States represent a significant growth opportunity.
Continue to Innovate and Expand Our Customer Platform. Mid-market businesses are increasingly realizing the value of having an integrated marketing, sales, customer service, operations, commerce, intelligence and content management platform. We believe we are well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity by introducing new products and applications to extend the functionality of our customer platform. As data is becoming more important to our customers’ success and a differentiator for our business, there is a need to move quickly on data enrichment.
Selectively Pursue Acquisitions. We will continue to selectively pursue acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies and teams that would allow us to add new features and functionalities to our customer platform and accelerate the pace of our innovation, while continuing to stay focused on the customer experience.
Our Customer Platform
Our customer platform, with engagement Hubs, our Smart CRM, and connected ecosystems enable companies to have a unified customer profile and connect with their customers at every part of their customer relationship lifecycle. Each Hub can be used standalone, with our Smart platform, a third party CRM, and/or in conjunction with any version of the other Hubs. Our Hubs are available in both free and paid tiers with gradually increasing levels of functionality that support the needs of our customers as their businesses grow.
Businesses that want to use software outside of our customer platform can leverage our ecosystem of third-party integrations from our platform application partners to have a single, integrated stack. We make it easy to find and install new or existing software solutions that complement our customer platform. Over 2,000 integrations and applications are available for our users, across a wide range of categories, including integrations with leading social media, email, sales, video, analytics, content and webinar tools. Customers can build custom applications and integrations on top of our customer platform themselves, or through third party developers in our ecosystem.
Smart CRM. The core of our customer platform is our Smart CRM: a unified data platform of lead and customer information that allows businesses to track their interactions with contacts and customers, manage their customer activities, report on their pipeline and sales, and manage and govern their team and business processes. This allows a complete view of lead and customer interactions across all of our integrated Hubs, giving our customer platform substantial power. This Smart CRM makes it possible to personalize every aspect of the customer interaction across web content, social media engagement, and email messages across devices, including mobile. The integrated Hubs and Smart CRM on our customer platform have a common user interface and are accessed through a single login.
Breeze. Breeze is our AI that powers the customer platform, including our Smart CRM, engagement Hubs, and the connected ecosystem. Breeze is designed to enhance efficiencies for customer-facing teams by providing AI-powered insights, automation, content generation, and data enrichment. Breeze includes Breeze Assistant, a go-to-market assistant to boost productivity and make work easier, and Breeze Agents to help teams automate work, end-to-end, from strategy to execution.
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Marketing Hub. Marketing Hub is an all-in-one toolset for marketers to create brand awareness, influence deals, and orchestrate marketing campaigns towards sales readiness over the entire customer lifecycle. Features include: marketing automation and email, social media, SEO, AEO, and reporting and analytics.
Sales Hub. Sales Hub is designed to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of sales teams. Businesses can empower their teams with tools that deliver a personalized experience for prospects with less work for sales representatives. Features include: email templates and tracking, conversations and live chat, meeting and call scheduling, lead and website visit alerts, lead scoring, sales automation, pipeline management, quoting, forecasting, and reporting.
Service Hub. Service Hub is our customer service software designed to help businesses manage, respond and connect with customers. Features include: conversations and live chat functionality, conversational bots, call tracking, tickets and help desk, automation and routing, knowledge base, team emails, feedback and reporting tools, and customer goals.
Content Hub. Our Content Hub combines the power of customer relationship management and a content management system into one integrated platform. Our content tools enable businesses to create new and edit existing web content while also personalizing their websites for different visitors and optimizing their websites to convert more visitors into leads and customers. Features include: website pages, business blogging, video and podcast hosting, smart content, landing pages and forms, SEO recommendations, forms and lead flow, web analytics reporting, calls-to-action, and file manager.
Operations Hub. Operations Hub is designed to help businesses combine, clean, and activate customer data in a connected platform, automate business processes, eliminate time-consuming data cleanup, and query and transform data to enable customer insights and connections. Features include: programmable automation, data sync, data curation, and data quality tools.
Commerce Hub. Commerce Hub is a B2B commerce suite that helps streamline the opportunity-to-cash process for businesses to get paid faster, increase revenue and save time. It includes an end-to-end payment solution (“Payments”) which enables customers to accept electronic funds transfers (e.g. credit card payments) from their customers in less time and with fewer tools. With Payments, our customer's customer can buy and pay directly on a website, an email, or chat. Features include: payment links, invoices, quotes, subscription management, automation and revenue reporting.
Our Services
We complement our product offerings with customer success, support, and occasionally, professional services. We view these as critical elements of ensuring the long-term retention of our customers. The majority of our services and support is offered over email, phone, chat applications and via web meeting technology rather than in-person, which is a more efficient business model for us and our customers. We also leverage AI to further boost this efficiency.
Customer Success. Our customers have access to a Customer Success Manager (“CSM”), Partner Development Manager ("PDM") or digital channels through our academy of educational content which are responsible for our customers’ long term success, retention and growth on our customer platform. Depending on the customer spend, they will either have a dedicated CSM, or are serviced primarily by digital and community forums. Our CSMs address the unique needs and goals of our customers through a series of ongoing interactions and strategy calls on how to best use our customer platform. Our PDMs play a similar role as our CSMs, but focus on the growth and success of our Solutions Partners. The Solutions Partner’s customers have oversight through CSM and work collaboratively with the PDM to help the Solutions Partner’s customers get the most value from our platform and the Solutions Partner’s services. Additionally, we embed Solution Architects with some customers to help them adapt their processes to be AI native and adopt HubSpot AI to run those processes.
Support. In addition to assistance provided by our online articles and customer discussion forums, we offer phone and/or email and chat based support, which is included in the cost of a subscription for our Hubs. Phone, email and chat support is available starting at the Professional product level for all Hubs while email and chat based support is available for Starter Hubs. We leverage AI as a core part of our support offerings. We strive to maintain an exceptional quality of customer service. We continuously monitor key customer service metrics such as phone hold time, ticket response time and ticket resolution rates, and we monitor the customer satisfaction of our customer support interactions. We believe our customer support is an important reason why businesses choose our customer platform and recommend it to their colleagues.
Professional Services. We offer professional services to educate and train customers on how to leverage our customer platform to transform how their business attracts, engages and delights customers. Depending on which Hubs and services a customer purchases, they receive onboarding guidance in the product and in some cases receive one-on-one training from one of our on-boarding, inbound consultants, or technical consultants by web meetings. Customers can purchase additional group training and education in online or in-person classes (when offered). We also offer in-app training modules that customers can use as part of their on-boarding. Our professional services are also available to customers who need additional assistance on a one-time or ongoing basis
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for an additional fee. Depending on the scope of work and the services a customer needs help with, we might recommend they work with our Solutions Partner ecosystem.
Our Customers
As of December 31, 2025, we had 288,706 Customers in more than 135 countries, representing many industries. No single customer represented more than ten percent of our revenue in 2025, 2024, or 2023.
Our Technology
Our Customers have chosen us as their customer platform, which we architected and built to be secure, highly distributed and highly scalable. Since our founding, we have embraced rapid, iterative product development lifecycles, cloud automation and open-source technologies, including big data platforms, as well as AI, to power marketing, sales, service, data, commerce, and content management programs and provide insights not previously possible or available.
Our customer platform is a multi-tenant, globally available software-as-a-service delivered through APIs, web browsers or mobile applications. Our commitment to a highly available, reliable, and scalable platform for businesses of all sizes is accomplished through the use of these technologies.
Platform Approach. We built HubSpot on a single platform with reusable and composable libraries, allowing us to rapidly address new feature areas and bring new products to market that have a consistent user experience and data model. We have built this platform with scale in mind, supporting thousands of components including hundreds of microservices.
Modern Database Architecture. We process billions of data points weekly across various channels, including social media, email, SEO and website visits, and continue to drive nearly real-time analytics across these channels. This is possible because we built our database from the ground up using distributed big data technologies such as HBase, Elasticsearch and Kafka to both process and analyze the large amounts of data we collect. We also utilize Vitess to operate MySQL at scale, allowing our engineers to choose the best datastore for each task.
Agility. Our infrastructure and development and software release processes allow us to update our platform for specific groups of customers or our entire customer base at any time. This means we can rapidly innovate and deliver new functionality frequently, without waiting for quarterly or annual release cycles. We typically deploy updates to our software platform thousands of times a day, enabling us to gather immediate customer feedback and improve our product quickly and continuously.
Cost leverage. Our customer platform was built on an almost exclusive footprint of open-source software and designed to operate in cloud-based data centers. As our processing volume continues to grow, we continue to receive larger volume discounts on a per-unit basis for costs such as storage, bandwidth and computing capacity. The shared infrastructure across our products also drives operational efficiencies. We believe that our extensive use of open-source software will provide additional leverage as we scale our customer platform and infrastructure.
Scalability.By leveraging leading cloud infrastructure providers along with our automated technology stack, we are able to scale workloads of varying sizes at any time. This allows us to handle customers of all sizes and demands without traditional operational limitations such as network bandwidth, computing cycles, or storage capacity as we can scale our platform on-demand.
Reliability. Customer data is distributed and processed across multiple data centers within a region to provide redundancy. We built our customer platform on a distributed computing architecture with reduced single points of failure and we operate across data center boundaries daily. In addition to datacenter level redundancy, this architecture supports multiple live copies of each data set along with snapshot capabilities for faster, point-in-time data recovery.
Security. We leverage industry standard network and perimeter defense technologies, distributed denial-of-service, protection systems (including web application firewalls) and enterprise grade domain name system and services across multiple vendors. Our data-center providers operate and certify to high industry compliance levels. Due to the broad footprint of our customer base, we regularly test and evaluate our platform with trusted third-party vendors to ensure the security and integrity of our services.
Marketing and Sales
We believe we are a global leader in developing and implementing cutting-edge marketing strategies. We started with inbound experience in marketing and sales. Over the past year we formalized and launched the marketing playbook for the AI era: Loop Marketing. HubSpot’s marketing team has been the leading practitioner of Loop marketing and the modern tactics such as AEO, AI Personalization, and AI enabled content production. We believe that our Loop marketing model combined with our AI lead sales
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model provides us with a competitive advantage, especially when targeting mid-market businesses, because we can attract and engage these businesses efficiently and at scale by leveraging AI-enhanced engagement strategies.
Marketing. Our marketing team attracts new leads and users each month through our industry-leading media network, AI-powered tools and applications, large social media following, high search engine and answer engine presence. We recognize that AI is fundamentally changing how consumers discover and engage with content, and we are actively integrating these technological advances to enhance our marketing capabilities while maintaining the human-centric approach that defines HubSpot marketing. We believe we have pioneered the Loop Marketing playbook to lead the AI revolution in marketing. In addition, we are generating leads for new and add-on product purchases through content and offers delivered through our customer platform to existing customers, optimized through machine learning and predictive analytics.
Direct Sales. Our sales representatives throughout the world use phone, email, web meetings, and AI-enhanced engagement tools to interact with prospects and customers. The revenue generated by our sales representatives originates with leads produced by various channels that are now augmented by AI-driven lead scoring and prioritization. In addition, our freemium products and in-product cross-sell offerings, supported by intelligent recommendation systems, help close new business with little or no interaction by our sales representatives.
Channel Sales. In addition to our direct sales team, we have sales representatives that manage relationships with our worldwide network of Solutions Partners who both use our platform for their own businesses and also, on a commissioned basis, refer customers to us. These Solutions Partners collaborate with us not only to leverage our software platform, AI capabilities, and educational resources, but also to build their own business by offering new services and shifting their revenue mix to include recurring revenue streams. We are actively working with our partners to navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by AI advancement, ensuring they are equipped to deliver value in an evolving technological landscape.
Governmental Regulations
We operate globally and are subject to numerous U.S. federal, state, and foreign laws and regulations covering a wide variety of subject matters. Our compliance with these laws and regulations may be onerous and could, individually or in the aggregate, increase our cost of doing business, impact our competitive position relative to our peers, and/or otherwise have an
adverse impact on our business, reputation, financial condition, and operating results. For information about governmental regulations applicable to our business, refer to “Risk Factors” in Item 1A.
Human Capital Management
Helping millions of organizations grow better requires a truly remarkable team. We take a thoughtful approach to talent attraction and retention in order to build a mission-driven culture, where people can do their best work. HubSpot is proud to have been named on notable sublists such as Forbes America’s Dream Employers, Forbes Best Company for Women, TIME America’s Best Midsize Companies, Newsweek Most Trustworthy Companies, and several Comparably Best Company lists (including Best Company for Women, Best Company for Diversity, Best Company for Leadership, Best Teams Engineering and Best Company Outlook). We view these recognitions as reflections of our employees’ experiences and indicators that our culture continues to evolve in ways that support long-term, sustainable performance.
As part of our commitment to responsible growth, we are also honored to be included on sustainability-focused lists such as TIME World's Most Sustainable Companies 2025 and Newsweek America's Greenest Companies 2026. These recognitions reinforce our focus on transparent business practices and building an enduring, environmentally responsible company.
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Intentionally Distributed Workforce.As of December 31, 2025, we had 8,882 full-time employees. Of these, 5,724 were in the Americas, 2,480 were in Europe, and 678 were in the Asia Pacific region. We have been intentional in building a work model that leans into flexibility, giving our employees the opportunity to work in a way that works best for them, while enabling effective and productive work. Aligned with previous years, substantially all of our employees can elect to work primarily from their home, in one of our offices, or split their time between home and office.
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Culture and Values.We obsess over our culture and craft our culture just like we craft our customer platform. Our mission is to help millions of organizations grow better and as a result, customer centricity, and putting the customer first, are fundamental in creating a company that lasts. A copy of our Culture Code can be found at: https://network.hubspot.com/slides/the-hubspot-culture-code.
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Belonging. Belonging is a core pillar of our talent strategy and a key driver of performance. We believe that when people are seen, valued, and respected, individual brilliance becomes collective strength. Our belonging strategy centers on
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representation, diversity of thought, inclusion, and equity—reflecting our view that inclusive teams fuel stronger innovation, better performance, and a more connected employee experience.
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Compensation and Benefits.We provide competitive compensation and benefits for our employees globally. Our compensation packages may include base salary, commission or semi-annual bonuses, and stock-based compensation awards. We also offer an employee stock purchase plan, as well as benefit plans, such as employee medical, dental, life and disability insurance, and retirement and pension arrangements, that vary by geography that align with market norms. We evaluate both compensation and benefit offerings on an annual basis and we make adjustments as needed.
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Learning and growth.We believe in life-long learning and invest in employee development at every stage. We offer interactive, regionalized on-boarding, one-on-one mentorship, year-round manager trainings and a mini-MBA Fellows program. In addition, we offer several live, self-paced and asynchronous resources to help employees develop their skills and capabilities through our internal, online learning management system.
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Employee Well-Being. We offer a mental wellness platform as a global benefit for employees and their dependents. In order to prevent and battle burnout and its root causes, we also offer a company holiday week for all employees to take time off and recharge, and programming for employees to listen, learn, and identify ways to prioritize their mental health at work.
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Social Impact. Our social impact work is focused on powering digital prosperity in the communities where our employees live and work. We do this through employee volunteering and giving initiatives, as well as through our newly launched signature social impact program, We Are All Entrepreneurs. This program is designed to support early-stage entrepreneurs in learning how to better leverage technology to grow their businesses. It combines asynchronous learning, live expert-led sessions, and mentorship from HubSpot employees to help make business technology more accessible to all entrepreneurs. With an intentionally distributed workforce, we have the opportunity to drive meaningful impact across the globe. We offer accessible and flexible ways for employees to engage in causes that matter to them, including micro-volunteering, mentoring, virtual volunteering, office-based drop-in events, offsite volunteering, and matching campaigns.
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Employee Engagement and Feedback. We administer an employee engagement survey, to assess and understand employee engagement and the effectiveness of our organization. The survey also enables us to provide data to leaders across the organization, empowering them to identify, address, and monitor feedback at the department and team level. These insights shape both short term actions and long term people strategies, ensuring we remain responsive to employee needs and business priorities.
Competition
Our market is evolving, highly competitive and fragmented, and we expect competition to increase in the future. We believe the principal competitive factors in our market are:
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vision for the market, product strategy and pace of innovation;
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marketing focus and domain expertise;
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integrated all-in-one customer platform;
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breadth and depth of product functionality;
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ease of use;
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scalable, open architecture;
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time to value and total cost of ownership;
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integration with third-party applications and data sources;
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use of CRM data to make strategic business decisions;
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use of evolving AI technologies;
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AI agents and automation capabilities that handle end-to-end workflows;
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unified data platform with AI-powered data quality and enrichment;
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AEO and AI-native marketing capabilities;
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name recognition and brand reputation; and
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“freemium” go-to-market motion.
We believe we compete favorably with respect to all of these factors.
We face intense competition from other companies that develop marketing, sales, customer service, operations, commerce, intelligence and content management software. Our competitors offer various point applications that provide certain functions and features that we provide, including:
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cloud-based marketing automation providers;
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content management systems;
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email marketing software vendors;
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sales automation software vendors;
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CRM software vendors;
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customer service platform vendors;
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CPQ and billing solution providers;
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commerce and payments solution providers;
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data enrichment vendors;
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AI agent and providers;
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AI-native CRM and workflow automation startups; and
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large-scale enterprise suites.
In addition, instead of using our customer platform, some prospective customers may elect to combine disparate point applications, such as content management, marketing automation, analytics, social media management, ticketing, and conversational bots.
Intellectual Property
Our ability to protect our intellectual property, including our technology, will be an important factor in the success and continued growth of our business. We protect our intellectual property through trade secrets law, copyrights, trademarks, patents, and contracts. Some of our technology relies upon third-party licensed intellectual property. We have 34 issued U.S. Patents and 35 patents applications pending. We intend to pursue and are pursuing additional patent protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost-effective.
In addition to the foregoing, we have established business procedures designed to maintain the confidentiality of our proprietary information, including the use of confidentiality agreements and assignment of inventions agreements with employees, independent contractors, consultants, and companies with which we conduct business.
Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property, unauthorized parties may still copy or otherwise obtain and use our technology. In addition, we intend to continue to expand our international operations, and effective intellectual property, copyright, trademark and trade secret protection may not be available or may be limited in foreign countries. Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business or our ability to compete.
Financial Information About Segments
We operate as one operating segment. Operating segments are defined as components of an enterprise for which separate financial information is regularly evaluated by the chief operating decision maker (“CODM”), which is our chief executive officer, in
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deciding how to allocate resources and assess performance. The CODM evaluates our financial information and resources and assesses the performance of these resources on a consolidated basis. Since we operate in one operating segment, financial information evaluated by the CODM can be found in the consolidated financial statements. See Footnote 11 within the consolidated financial statements for information by geographic area.
Available Information
Our website is located at http://www.hubspot.com, and our investor relations website is located at https://www.hubspot.com/investor-relations. Copies of our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available, free of charge, on our investor relations website as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are filed with, or furnished to, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website at http://www.sec.gov that contains our SEC filings and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.
We webcast our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, press and earnings releases, and blogs as part of our investor relations website. We have used, and intend to continue to use, our investor relations website as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Further corporate governance information, including our certificate of incorporation, bylaws, governance guidelines, board committee charters, and code of business conduct and ethics, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading “Corporate Governance.” The contents of our websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.
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Item 1A. RISK FACTORS
An investment in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks described below and the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our other public filings before making an investment decision. Our business, prospects, financial condition, or operating results could be harmed by any of these risks, as well as other risks not currently known to us or that we currently consider immaterial. If any such risks and uncertainties actually occurs, our business, financial condition or operating results could differ materially from the plans, projections and other forward-looking statements included in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our other public filings. The trading price of our common stock could decline due to any of these risks, and, as a result, you may lose all or part of your investment.
Risks Related to Our Business and Strategy
We are dependent upon customer renewals, the addition of new customers, increased revenue from existing customers and the continued growth of the market for a customer platform.
We derive, and expect to continue to derive, a substantial portion of our revenue from the sale of subscriptions to our customer platform. The market for marketing, sales, service, operations, commerce and customer management products is still evolving, and competitive dynamics may cause pricing levels to change as the market matures and as existing and new market participants introduce new types of point applications and different approaches to enable businesses to address their respective needs. As a result, we may be forced to, or strategically choose to, reduce the prices we charge for our platform and may be unable to renew existing customer agreements or enter into new customer agreements at the same prices and upon the same terms that we have historically. In addition, our growth strategy involves a scalable pricing model (including freemium versions of our products and our recent seats-based and consumption-based pricing model changes) intended to provide opportunities to increase the value of our customer relationships over time, including as customers expand their use of our platform, or we sell to other parts of their organizations, cross-sell additional products and seats through touchless or low touch in product purchases, and upsell additional offerings and features. Our consumption-based pricing strategies are novel and evolving. Due to customer flexibility in the timing of their use of our platform, we could have less predictability from our consumption-based products than we do for our subscription-based products, and there is a risk that customers could use our consumption-based products at lower levels than we expect. If our scalable pricing and cross-selling efforts are unsuccessful or if our existing customers do not expand their use of our platform or adopt additional offerings and features, or if the anticipated benefits from scalable pricing take longer to realize or are not realized at all, our revenue and operating results may suffer.
Our subscription renewal rates may decrease, and any decrease could harm our future revenue and operating results.
Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our platform after the expiration of their subscription periods, substantially all of which are one year or less. In addition, our customers may seek to renew for lower subscription tiers, for fewer contacts or seats, or for shorter contract lengths. Also, customers may choose not to renew their subscriptions for a variety of reasons. Our renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including limited customer resources, pricing changes, the prices of services offered by our competitors, adoption and utilization of our platform and add-on applications by our customers, adoption of our new products, customer satisfaction with our platform, mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base, reductions in our customers’ spending levels or declines in customer activity as a result of economic downturns or uncertainty in financial markets. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions for our platform or decrease the amount they spend with us, our revenue will decline and our business will suffer.
In addition, a subscription model creates certain risks related to the timing of revenue recognition and potential reductions in cash flows. A portion of the subscription-based revenue we report each quarter results from the recognition of deferred revenue relating to subscription agreements entered into during previous quarters. In addition, we do not record deferred revenue beyond amounts invoiced as a liability on our consolidated balance sheets. A decline in new or renewed subscriptions in any period may not be immediately reflected in our reported financial results for that period, but may result in a decline in our revenue in future quarters. If we were to experience significant downturns in subscription sales and renewal rates, our reported financial results might not reflect such downturns until future periods.
We face significant competition from both established and new companies in the software market in which we operate, which may harm our ability to add new customers, retain existing customers and grow our business.
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The software market in which we operate is evolving, highly competitive and significantly fragmented. With the introduction of new technologies and the potential entry of new competitors into the market, we expect competition to persist and intensify in the future, which could harm our ability to increase sales, maintain or increase renewals and maintain our prices.
We face intense competition from other software companies in the market we operate that provide interactive marketing services. Competition could significantly impede our ability to sell subscriptions to our customer platform on terms favorable to us. Our current and potential competitors may develop and market new technologies including as a result of new or better use of evolving AI technologies, whether through greater investments in AI development, access to higher quality training datasets, or more advanced AI models, that render our existing or future products less competitive, or obsolete. We may also face greater competition from non-specialist solutions relying on generic large language models (“LLMs”), generative AI and general-purpose agents to address a broad range of business needs. As we attempt to sell our products and solutions to new and existing customers, we must convince them that our products and solutions are superior to other solutions available to their organizations, including generic LLMs, software created using natural language prompts and generative AI (referred to as vibe coding) and other emerging technologies. In addition, if these competitors develop products with similar or superior functionality to our platform, we may need to decrease the prices or accept less favorable terms for our platform subscriptions in order to remain competitive. If we are unable to maintain our pricing due to competitive pressures, our margins will be reduced and our operating results will be negatively affected.
Our competitors include:
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cloud-based marketing automation providers;
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email marketing software vendors;
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sales force automation and CRM software vendors;
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large-scale enterprise suites;
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customer service software providers; and
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content management systems.
In addition, instead of using our platform, some prospective customers may elect to combine disparate point applications, such as content management, marketing automation, CRM, analytics and social media management. We expect that new competitors, such as enterprise software vendors that have traditionally focused on enterprise resource planning or other applications supporting back office functions, will develop and introduce applications serving customer-facing and other front office functions. This development could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. In addition, sales force automation and CRM vendors could acquire or develop applications that compete with our sales and CRM offerings. Some of these companies have acquired social media marketing and other marketing software providers to integrate with their broader offerings.
Our current and potential competitors may have significantly more financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we have, be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products and services, may have more extensive customer bases and broader customer relationships than we have, and may have longer operating histories and greater name recognition than we have. As a result, these competitors may respond faster to new technologies and undertake more extensive marketing campaigns for their products. In a few cases, these vendors may also be able to offer a customer platform at little or no additional cost by bundling it with their existing suite of applications. To the extent any of our competitors has existing relationships with potential customers for either marketing software or other applications, those customers may be unwilling to purchase our platform because of their existing relationships with our competitor. If we are unable to compete with such companies, the demand for our customer platform could substantially decline.
In addition, if one or more of our competitors were to merge or partner with another of our competitors, our ability to compete effectively could be adversely affected. Our competitors may also establish or strengthen cooperative relationships with our current or future strategic distribution and technology partners or other parties with whom we have relationships, thereby limiting our ability to promote and implement our platform. We may not be able to compete successfully against current or future competitors, and competitive pressures may harm our business, operating results and financial condition.
We have experienced rapid growth and organizational change in recent periods and expect growth of headcount and operations over the long-term. If we fail to manage growth and organizational change effectively, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service or address competitive challenges adequately.
Our headcount and operations continue to grow. For example, we had 8,882 full-time employees as of December 31, 2025 and 8,246 as of December 31, 2024. To date, we have opened several international offices. This growth has placed, and will continue to place, a significant strain on our management, administrative, operational and financial infrastructure. We expect to continue to grow
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headcount and operations over the long-term. We anticipate future growth will be required over the long term to address increases in our product offerings and continued expansion. Our success will depend in part upon our ability to recruit, hire, train, manage and integrate qualified managers, technical personnel and employees in specialized roles within our company, including in technology, sales and marketing. Furthermore, as many of our employees work remotely from geographic areas across jurisdictions where we have offices pursuant to our hybrid workplace model, which provides our employees with the option to be fully remote, work full-time from one of our offices, or have the flexibility to work both in the office and remotely, we may need to reallocate our investment of resources and closely monitor a variety of local regulations and requirements, including local tax laws. We may experience unpredictability in our expenses and employee work culture. If we experience any of these effects in connection with future growth, if our new employees perform poorly, or if we are unsuccessful in recruiting, hiring, training, managing and integrating new employees, or retaining our existing employees, it could materially impair our ability to attract new customers, retain existing customers and expand their use of our platform, all of which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Failure to effectively develop and expand our customer platform capabilities could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our platform.
To increase customers and achieve broader market acceptance of our customer platform, we will need to continue to expand our customer platform capabilities, including our sales force and third-party channel partners. We will continue to dedicate significant resources to sales and marketing programs. The effectiveness of our sales and marketing and third-party channel partners has varied over time and may vary in the future and depends on our ability to maintain and improve our customer platform including with respect to AI and machine learning. All of these efforts will require us to invest significant financial and other resources. Our business will be seriously harmed if our efforts do not generate a correspondingly significant increase in revenue. We may not achieve anticipated revenue growth from expanding our sales force if we are unable to hire, develop and retain talented sales personnel, if our new sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time or if our sales and marketing programs are not effective.
The rate of growth of our business depends on the continued participation and level of service of our Solutions Partners.
We rely on our Solutions Partners to provide certain services to our customers, as well as pursue sales of our customer platform to customers. To the extent we do not attract new Solutions Partners, or existing or new Solutions Partners do not refer a growing number of customers to us, due to changes in our Solutions Partner relationship models or otherwise, our revenue and operating results would be harmed. In addition, if our Solutions Partners do not continue to provide services to our customers, we would be required to provide such services ourselves either by expanding our internal team or engaging other third-party providers, which would increase our operating costs.
If we fail to maintain our thought leadership position, our business may suffer.
We believe that maintaining our thought leadership position in the customer platform space is an important element in attracting new customers. We devote significant resources to develop and maintain our thought leadership position, with a focus on identifying and interpreting emerging trends, shaping and guiding industry dialog and creating and sharing the best practices. Our activities related to developing and maintaining our thought leadership may not yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incurred in such effort. We rely upon the continued services of our management and employees with domain expertise with marketing, sales, services, operations, commerce and content management, and the loss of any key employees in this area could harm our competitive position and reputation. If we fail to successfully grow and maintain our thought leadership position, we may not attract enough new customers or retain our existing customers, and our business could suffer.
If we fail to further enhance our brand and maintain our existing strong brand awareness, our ability to expand our customer base will be impaired and our financial condition may suffer.
We believe that our development of the HubSpot brand is critical to achieving widespread awareness of our existing and future solutions, and, as a result, is important to attracting new customers and maintaining existing customers. In the past, our efforts to build our brand have involved significant expenses, and we believe that this investment has resulted in strong brand recognition in the B2B market. Successful promotion and maintenance of our brands will depend largely on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts and on our ability to provide a reliable and useful customer platform at competitive prices. Brand promotion activities may not yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incurred in building our brand. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand, our business could suffer.
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If we fail to adapt and respond effectively to rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards and changing customer needs or requirements, our customer platform may become less competitive.
Our future success depends on our ability to adapt and innovate our customer platform. To attract new customers and increase revenue from existing customers, we need to continue to enhance and improve our offerings to meet customer needs at prices that our customers are willing to pay. Such efforts will require adding new functionality and responding to technological advancements, including AI and machine learning, which will increase our research and development costs. Further, any third-party AI
technologies leveraged in our products and services may not be available on commercially reasonable terms or at all and any loss of rights to use such technologies may significantly increase our expenses or otherwise disrupt or delay the provisioning of
our products and services to customers. If we are unable to develop, license or acquire new applications that address our customers’ needs, or to enhance and improve our platform in a timely manner, we may not be able to maintain or increase market acceptance of our platform. Our ability to grow is also subject to the risk of future disruptive technologies. Access and use of our customer platform is provided via the cloud, which, itself, was disruptive to the previous enterprise software model. If new technologies emerge that are able to deliver marketing software and related applications at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently or more securely, such technologies could adversely affect our ability to compete.
If we fail to offer high-quality customer support, our business and reputation may suffer.
High-quality education, training and customer support are important for the successful marketing, sale and use of our customer platform and for the renewal of existing customers. Providing this education, training and support requires that our personnel who manage our online training resource, HubSpot Academy, or provide customer support have specific domain knowledge and expertise, making it more difficult for us to hire qualified personnel and to scale up our support operations. The importance of high-quality customer support will increase as we expand our business and pursue new customers. If we do not help our customers use multiple applications within our customer platform and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to sell additional functionality and services to, or to retain, existing customers may suffer and our reputation with existing or potential customers may be harmed.
We may not be able to scale our business quickly enough to meet our customers’ growing needs and if we are not able to grow efficiently, our operating results could be harmed.
As usage of our customer platform grows and as customers use our platform for additional applications, such as sales and services, we will need to devote additional resources to improving our application architecture, integrating with third-party systems and maintaining infrastructure performance. In addition, we will need to appropriately scale our internal business systems and our services organization, including customer support and professional services, to serve our growing customer base, particularly as our customer demographics change over time. Any failure of or delay in these efforts could cause impaired system performance and reduced customer satisfaction. These issues could reduce the attractiveness of our customer platform to customers, resulting in decreased sales to new customers, lower renewal rates by existing customers, the issuance of service credits, or requested refunds, which could impede our revenue growth and harm our reputation. Even if we are able to upgrade our systems and expand our staff, any such expansion will be expensive and complex, requiring management’s time and attention. We could also face inefficiencies or operational failures as a result of our efforts to scale our infrastructure. Moreover, there are inherent risks associated with upgrading, improving and expanding our information technology systems. We cannot be sure that the expansion and improvements to our infrastructure and systems will be fully or effectively implemented on a timely basis, if at all.
Our ability to introduce new products and features, including new products and features that utilize AI, is dependent on adequate research and development resources. If we do not adequately fund our research and development efforts, we may not be able to compete effectively and our business and operating results may be harmed.
To remain competitive, we must continue to develop new product offerings, applications, features and enhancements to our existing customer platform. Maintaining adequate research and development personnel and resources to meet the demands of the market is essential. If we are unable to develop our platform internally due to certain constraints, such as high employee turnover, lack of management ability or a lack of other research and development resources, we may miss market opportunities. Further, many of our competitors expend a considerably greater amount of funds on their research and development programs, and those that do not may be acquired by larger companies that would allocate greater resources to our competitors’ research and development programs. Our failure to maintain adequate research and development resources, including recruiting and retaining highly qualified personnel, (particularly with AI and machine learning backgrounds), or to compete effectively with the research and development programs of our competitors could materially adversely affect our business.
The development of next-generation solutions that utilize new and advanced features, including AI and machine learning, such as Breeze, involves making predictions regarding the willingness of the market to adopt such technologies over legacy solutions. The
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Company may be required to commit significant resources to developing new products, software and services, such as Breeze, before knowing whether such investment will result in products or services that the market will accept.
The Company’s inability, for technological, legal or other reasons, some of which may be beyond the Company’s control, to enhance, develop, introduce and monetize products and services in a timely manner, or at all, in response to changing market conditions or customer requirements could have a material adverse effect on the Company’s business, results of operations and financial condition or could result in its products and services not achieving market acceptance or becoming obsolete. In addition, if the Company fails to deliver a compelling customer experience or accurately predict emerging technological trends and the changing needs of customers and end users, or if the features of its new products and services do not meet the demands of its customers or are not sufficiently differentiated from those of its competitors, the Company’s business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially harmed.
Uncertainty around new and emerging AI applications such as agentic AI technologies and generative AI content creation, including Breeze, may require additional investment in the development or acquisition of proprietary datasets, machine learning models and other AI systems to test for accuracy, bias and other variables, which are often complex. Development of new approaches and processes to provide attribution or remuneration to content creators and building and/or integrating systems that enable creatives to have greater control over the use of their work in the development of AI may be costly and could impact our profit margin if we are unable to monetize such assets. In addition, AI technologies, including agentic and generative AI tools, may create content, analyses or recommendations without human intervention that take or suggest actions based on incomplete or inaccurate data, “hallucinatory” inferences, or flawed training inputs, or contain copyrighted or other protected material, and if our customers or others use this flawed or protected content or materials to their detriment, we may be exposed to brand or reputational harm, competitive harm, and/or legal liability. Developing, testing and deploying AI systems may also increase the cost profile of our offerings due to the nature of the computing costs involved in such systems.
Changes in the sizes or types of businesses that purchase our platform or in the applications within our customer platform purchased or used by our customers could negatively affect our operating results.
Our strategy is to sell subscriptions to our customer platform to mid-sized businesses, but we have sold and will continue to sell to organizations ranging from small businesses to enterprises. Our gross margins can vary depending on numerous factors related to the implementation and use of our customer platform, including the sophistication and intensity of our customers’ use of our platform and the level of professional services and support required by a customer. Sales to enterprise customers may entail longer sales cycles and more significant selling efforts. Selling to small businesses may involve greater credit risk and uncertainty. If there are changes in the mix of businesses that purchase our platform or the mix of the product plans purchased by our customers, our gross margins could decrease and our operating results could be adversely affected.
We have in the past completed acquisitions and may continue to acquire or invest in other companies or technologies in the future, which could divert management’s attention, fail to meet our expectations, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, increase expenses, disrupt our operations or harm our operating results.
We have in the past acquired, and we may in the future acquire or invest in, businesses, products or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our platform, enhance our technical capabilities or otherwise offer growth opportunities. We may not be able to fully realize the anticipated benefits of historical or any future acquisitions. The pursuit of potential acquisitions may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses related to identifying, investigating and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated.
There are inherent risks in integrating and managing acquisitions. If we acquire additional businesses, we may not be able to assimilate or integrate the acquired personnel, operations and technologies successfully or effectively manage the combined business following the acquisition and our management may be distracted from operating our business. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from the acquired business due to a number of factors, including: unanticipated costs or liabilities associated with the acquisition; incurrence of acquisition-related costs, which would be recognized as a current period expense; the inability to generate sufficient revenue to offset acquisition or investment costs; the inability to maintain relationships with customers and partners of the acquired business; the difficulty of incorporating acquired technology and rights into our platform and of maintaining quality and security standards consistent with our brand; delays in customer purchases due to uncertainty related to any acquisition; the need to integrate or implement additional controls, procedures and policies; challenges caused by distance, language and cultural differences; harm to our existing business relationships with business partners and customers as a result of the acquisition; the potential loss of key employees; use of resources that are needed in other parts of our business and diversion of management and employee resources; and use of substantial portions of our available cash or the incurrence of debt to consummate the acquisition. Acquisitions also increase the risk of unforeseen legal and compliance liabilities, including for potential violations of applicable law or industry rules and regulations, arising from prior or ongoing acts or omissions by the acquired businesses which are not discovered by
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due diligence during the acquisition process, including data handling, cybersecurity risks and privacy violations. Generally, if an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, our operating results, business and financial condition may suffer. Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition.
In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. If our acquisitions do not ultimately yield expected returns, we may be required to make charges to our operating results based on our impairment assessment process, which could harm our results of operations.
We are subject to risks associated with our strategic investments, including partial or complete loss of invested capital. Significant changes in the fair value of this portfolio, including changes in the valuation of our investments in privately held companies, could negatively impact our financial results.
We have made, and expect in the future to make, strategic investments in privately held companies and private limited partnerships. While we invest in companies that we believe have the potential to transform their industries, improve customer experiences, help us expand our solution ecosystem or support other corporate initiatives, we may still experience unforeseen brand or reputational harm associated with our investments. We may also experience challenges from regulatory authorities in connection with our investments, including from antitrust authorities who are increasingly scrutinizing technology investments, and which may lead to unforeseen expenditures or which may block, delay or impose undesirable conditions on transactions involving our investment portfolio. Our investments range from early-stage companies to more mature companies with established revenue streams and business models. Many such companies generate net losses and the market for their products, services or technologies may be slow to develop, and, therefore, they are dependent on the availability of later rounds of financing from banks or investors on favorable terms to continue their operations. Investments in early-stage companies are inherently speculative, as these companies may not yet be revenue-generating and could still be in the process of developing their products and services at the time of our investment. The financial success of our investment in any company or partnership is typically dependent on a liquidity event, such as a public offering, acquisition or other favorable market event reflecting appreciation to the cost of our initial investment. In certain cases, our ability to sell these investments may be impacted by contractual obligations to hold the securities for a set period of time after a public offering. All of our investments are subject to a risk of partial or total loss of invested capital.
We may experience future volatility in our consolidated statements of operations due to changes in market prices, observable price changes and impairments of our strategic investments. The resulting gains or losses could be material depending on market conditions and events, particularly in periods with economic uncertainty, inflation, geopolitical conflict, volatile public equity markets or unsettled global market conditions.
Because our long-term growth strategy involves further expansion of our sales to customers outside the United States, our business will be susceptible to risks associated with international operations.
A component of our growth strategy involves the further expansion of our operations and customer base internationally. We have formed several international entities and may plan to form additional entities in the future. These international operations focus primarily on sales, professional services and support, and select international locations have development teams. Our current international operations and future initiatives will involve a variety of risks, including:
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difficulties in maintaining our company culture with a dispersed and distant workforce;
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more stringent regulations relating to data security and the unauthorized use of, or access to, commercial and personal data, particularly in the European Union;
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unexpected changes in regulatory requirements, taxes or trade laws, including tariffs or other trade restrictions;
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differing labor regulations, especially in the European Union, where labor laws are generally more advantageous to employees as compared to the United States, including deemed hourly wage and overtime regulations in these locations;
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challenges inherent in efficiently managing an increased number of employees over large geographic distances, including the need to implement appropriate systems, policies, benefits and compliance programs;
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difficulties in managing a business in new markets with diverse cultures, languages, customs, legal systems, alternative dispute systems and regulatory systems;
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currency exchange rate fluctuations and the resulting effect on our revenue and expenses, and the cost and risk of entering into hedging transactions;
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global economic uncertainty caused by global political events, including changes in trade policies, including trade wars, tariffs or other trade restrictions or the threat of such actions;
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limitations on our ability to reinvest earnings from operations in one country to fund the capital needs of our operations in other countries;
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limited or insufficient intellectual property protection;
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perceptions of U.S.-based companies in the regions where we operate or plan to operate;
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perceptions of regions or governments in the regions where we operate or plan to operate, resulting in negative publicity or reputational harm;
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international disputes, wars, political instability or terrorist activities and resulting economic instability;
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likelihood of potential or actual violations of domestic and international anticorruption laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the U.K. Bribery Act, or of U.S. and international export control and sanctions regulations, which likelihood may increase with an increase of sales or operations in foreign jurisdictions and operations in certain industries; and
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adverse tax burdens and foreign exchange controls that could make it difficult to repatriate earnings and cash.
Our limited experience in operating our business internationally increases the risk that any potential future expansion efforts that we may undertake will not be successful. If in the future, we invest substantial time and resources to expand our international operations and are unable to do so successfully and in a timely manner, our business and operating results will suffer. We continue to implement policies and procedures to facilitate our compliance with U.S. laws and regulations applicable to or arising from our international business. Inadequacies in our past or current compliance practices may increase the risk of inadvertent violations of such laws and regulations, which could lead to financial and other penalties that could damage our reputation and impose costs on us.
Social and ethical issues relating to the use of new and evolving technologies, such as AI, in our offerings may result in reputational harm and liability.
Social and ethical issues relating to the use of new and evolving technologies such as AI in our offerings, may result in reputational harm and liability, and may cause us to incur additional research and development costs to resolve such issues. We are increasingly building AI into many of our offerings, including early-stage agentic and generative AI features. As with many innovations, AI presents risks and challenges that could affect its adoption, and therefore our business. If we enable or offer solutions that draw controversy due to their perceived or actual impact on human rights, privacy, employment, or in other social contexts, we may experience brand or reputational harm, competitive harm or legal liability. Potential government regulation related to AI use and ethics may also increase the burden and cost of research and development in this area, and failure to properly remediate AI usage or ethics issues may cause public confidence in AI to be undermined, which could slow adoption of AI in our products and services. The rapid evolution of AI will require the application of resources to develop, test and maintain our products and services to help ensure that AI is implemented ethically in order to minimize unintended, harmful impact.
Risks Related to Employee Matters
If we cannot maintain our company culture as we experience changes in our workforce, we could lose the innovation, teamwork, passion and focus on execution that we believe contribute to our success and our business may be harmed.
We believe that a critical component to our success has been our company culture, which is based on transparency and personal autonomy. We have invested substantial time and resources in building our team within this company culture. We offer a hybrid workplace model, which means our employees have the option to be fully remote, work full-time from one of our offices, or work both in the office and remotely. Preservation of our corporate culture has been made more difficult as the majority of our workforce works from home. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our ability to retain and recruit personnel and to effectively focus on and pursue our corporate objectives. As we grow and continue to develop our company infrastructure, and experience organizational change, we may find it difficult to maintain these important aspects of our company culture and our business may be adversely impacted.
We rely on our management team and other key employees, and the loss of one or more key employees could harm our business.
Our success and future growth depend upon the continued services of our management team, including our co-founder, Dharmesh Shah, our chief executive officer, Yamini Rangan, and other key employees in the areas of research and development,
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marketing, sales, services, operations, and general and administrative functions. From time to time, there may be changes in our management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. We also are dependent on the continued service of our existing software engineers and information technology personnel because of the complexity of our platform, technologies and infrastructure. We may terminate any employee’s employment at any time, with or without cause, and any employee may resign at any time, with or without cause. We do not have employment agreements with any of our key personnel. The loss of one or more of our key employees could harm our business.
The failure to attract and retain additional qualified personnel could prevent us from executing our business strategy.
To execute our business strategy, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. In particular, we compete with many other companies for software developers with high levels of experience in designing, developing and managing cloud-based software, or with AI and machine learning backgrounds, as well as for skilled information technology, marketing, sales and operations professionals, and we may not be successful in attracting and retaining the professionals we need. Also, our customer platform domain experts are very important to our success and are difficult to replace. We have from time to time in the past experienced, and we expect to continue to experience in the future, difficulty in hiring and difficulty in retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications worldwide, particularly for engineers with experience in AI. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we do. Other companies that continue to offer a remote or hybrid work environment may increase the competition for such employees from employers outside of our traditional office locations. In addition, if we choose to no longer offer a remote or hybrid work environment, we may face more difficulty in retaining our workforce. Further, labor is subject to external factors that are beyond our control, including our industry’s highly competitive market for skilled workers and leaders, cost inflation, and workforce participation rates. In addition, if our reputation were to be harmed, whether as a result of media, legislative, or regulatory scrutiny or otherwise, it could make it more difficult to attract and retain personnel that are critical to the success of our business.
In addition, in making employment decisions, particularly in the software industry, job candidates often consider the value of equity incentives they are to receive in connection with their employment. If the price of our stock declines, or experiences significant volatility, our ability to attract or retain key employees will be adversely affected. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our growth prospects could be severely harmed.
Risks Related to Global Economic Conditions
We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates that could adversely affect our financial results.
We face exposure to movements in currency exchange rates, which may cause our revenue and operating results to differ materially from expectations. As we have expanded our international operations, our exposure to exchange rate fluctuations has increased. Fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar versus foreign currencies may impact our operating results when translated into U.S. dollars. Thus, our results of operations and cash flows are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates and may be adversely affected in the future due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. As exchange rates vary, revenue, cost of revenue, operating expenses and other operating results, when re-measured, may differ materially from expectations. In addition, our operating results are subject to fluctuation if our mix of U.S. and foreign currency denominated transactions and expenses changes in the future. In the first quarter of 2024, we implemented a hedging program intended to allow us to mitigate foreign exchange impacts, such as exposure to currency exchange rates in connection with significant transactions denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, by entering into derivatives transactions such as foreign exchange forwards. We may also employ certain other strategies in the future to mitigate foreign currency risk. There can be no guarantee or assurance that such hedging program and the strategies we employ pursuant thereto will be effective to reduce or eliminate our exposure to foreign exchange rate fluctuations to the extent we anticipate, or at all. Furthermore, the hedging program and the derivatives transactions employed as part thereof involve costs and risks of their own, including ongoing management time and expertise, external costs to implement the programs and strategies, potential counterparty credit risk and liquidity risk, and potential accounting implications. Additionally, as we anticipate growing our business further outside of the United States, the effects of movements in currency exchange rates will increase as our transaction volume outside of the United States increases.
Weakened global economic conditions may harm our industry, business and results of operations.
Our overall performance depends in part on worldwide economic conditions. Global financial developments and downturns seemingly unrelated to us or the software industry may harm us. The United States and other key international economies have been affected from time to time by falling demand for a variety of goods and services, restricted credit, poor liquidity, reduced corporate profitability, volatility in credit, equity and foreign exchange markets, volatility in the banking sector, changes in the labor market,
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supply chain disruptions, bankruptcies, inflation and overall uncertainty with respect to the economy, including with respect to trade issues, such as trade wars, tariffs or other trade restrictions or the threat of such actions. For example, on October 1, 2025, the U.S. federal government shut down through November 12, 2025, suspending services deemed non-essential as a result of the failure by Congress to enact regular appropriations for the 2026 fiscal year. If we experience another government shutdown , it could result in increased uncertainty and volatility in the global economy and financial markets which could have an adverse effect on our business. Weak economic conditions or significant uncertainty regarding the stability of financial markets related to stock market volatility, inflation, recession, changes in tariffs or other trade restrictions, trade agreements, trade wars or governmental fiscal, monetary and tax policies, among others, could adversely impact our business, financial condition and operating results. Further, weak market conditions have, and could in the future result in, impairment of our investments and long-lived assets.
Further, the economies of countries in Europe have been experiencing weakness associated with high sovereign debt levels, weakness in the banking sector, uncertainty over the future of the Eurozone and volatility in the value of the pound sterling and the Euro and instability resulting from the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and in Israel, Gaza, Iran, and in Venezuela. The effects of such conflicts, including any resulting sanctions, export controls or other restrictive actions that may be imposed against governmental or other entities in, for example, Russia, have in the past contributed and may in the future contribute to disruption, instability and volatility in the global markets. We have operations, as well as current and potential new customers, throughout Europe. If economic conditions in Europe and other key markets for our platform continue to remain uncertain or deteriorate further, it could adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to subscribe to our platform, delay prospective customers’ purchasing decisions, reduce the value or duration of their subscriptions or affect renewal rates, all of which could harm our operating results.
More recently, global inflation rates have increased to levels not seen in several decades, which may result in decreased demand for our products and services, increases in our operating costs, including our labor costs, constrained credit and liquidity, reduced government spending and volatility in financial markets. The Federal Reserve and other international government agencies have raised, and may again raise, interest rates in response to concerns over inflation risk. Increases in interest rates on credit and debt that would increase the cost of any borrowing that we may make from time to time and could impact our ability to access the capital markets. Increases in interest rates, especially if coupled with reduced government spending and volatility in financial markets, may have the effect of further increasing economic uncertainty and heightening these risks. In an inflationary environment, we may be unable to raise the sales prices of our products and services at or above the rate at which our costs increase, which could/would reduce our profit margins and have a material adverse effect on our financial results and net income. We also may experience lower than expected sales and potential adverse impacts on our competitive position if there is a decrease in consumer spending or a negative reaction to our pricing. A reduction in our revenue would be detrimental to our profitability and financial condition and could also have an adverse impact on our future growth.
There continues to be uncertainty in the changing market and economic conditions, including the possibility of additional measures that could be taken by the Federal Reserve and other domestic and international government agencies, related to concerns over inflation risk. A sharp rise in interest rates could have an adverse impact on the fair market value of certain securities in our portfolio and investments in some financial instruments could pose risks arising from market liquidity and credit concerns, which could adversely affect our financial results.
Economic uncertainty may lead to decreased demand for our products and services and otherwise harm our business and results of operations.
Our overall performance depends, in part, on worldwide economic conditions. Impacts of economic weakness include:
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falling overall demand for goods and services, leading to reduced profitability;
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reduced credit availability;
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higher borrowing costs;
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reduced liquidity;
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changes in the labor market;
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supply chain disruptions;
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volatility in credit, equity and foreign exchange markets; and
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bankruptcies.
Economic weakness could lead to inflation, higher interest rates, and uncertainty about business continuity, which may adversely affect our business and our results of operations. As our customers react to global economic conditions and the potential for
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a global recession, we may see them reduce spending on our products and take additional precautionary measures to limit or delay expenditures and preserve capital and liquidity. Reductions in spending on our solutions, delays in purchasing decisions, lack of renewals, inability to attract new customers, as well as pressure for extended billing terms or pricing discounts, would limit our ability to grow our business and could negatively affect our operating results and financial condition.
Risks Related to Our Technical Operations Infrastructure and Dependence on Third Parties
Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center providers could impair our ability to deliver our platform to our customers, resulting in customer dissatisfaction, damage to our reputation, loss of customers, limited growth and reduction in revenue.
We currently serve the majority of our platform functions from third-party data center hosting facilities operated by Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) in the United States and Europe. We also have several colocations which host certain critical services (for example, VPN access) in various locations around the world. In addition, we use Cloudflare Global CDN to optimize content delivery across our locations.
Any damage to, or failure of, the systems of our third-party providers could result in interruptions to our platform. Despite precautions taken at our data centers, the occurrence of spikes in usage volume, a natural disaster, such as earthquakes or hurricane, an act of terrorism, geopolitical conflict, vandalism or sabotage, a disruptive cyber-attack, a decision to close a facility without adequate notice, power or telecommunications failures or other unanticipated problems at a facility could result in lengthy interruptions in the availability of our on-demand software. Similarly, security vulnerabilities or data breaches with our third-party providers could impact the security and availability of our platform. In the event that any of our third-party facilities arrangements is terminated, or if there is a lapse of service or damage to a facility, we could experience interruptions in our platform as well as delays and additional expenses in arranging new facilities and services. Even with current and planned disaster recovery arrangements, our business could be harmed. Also, in the event of damage or interruption, our insurance policies may not adequately compensate us for any losses that we may incur. These factors in turn could further reduce our revenue, subject us to liability and cause us to issue credits or cause customers to fail to renew their subscriptions, any of which could materially adversely affect our business.
If our customer platform has outages or fails due to defects or similar problems, and if we fail to correct any defect or other software problems, we could lose customers, become subject to service performance or warranty claims or incur significant costs.
Our customer platform and its underlying infrastructure are inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors. We release modifications, updates, bug fixes and other changes to our software several times per day, without traditional human-performed quality control reviews for each release. We have from time to time found defects in our software and may discover additional defects in the future. We may not be able to detect and correct defects or errors before customers begin to use our platform or its applications. Consequently, we or our customers may discover defects or errors after our platform has been implemented. Defects or errors could result in product outages and could also cause inaccuracies in the data we collect and process for our customers, or even the loss, damage or inadvertent release of such confidential data. We implement bug fixes and upgrades as part of our regular system maintenance, which may lead to system downtime. Even if we are able to implement the bug fixes and upgrades in a timely manner, any history of product outages, defects or inaccuracies in the data we collect for our customers, or the loss, damage or inadvertent release of confidential data could cause our reputation to be harmed, and customers may elect not to purchase or renew their agreements with us. Furthermore, these issues could subject us to service performance credits (whether offered by us or required by contract), warranty claims or increased insurance costs. The costs associated with product outages, any material defects or errors in our platform or other performance problems may be substantial and could materially adversely affect our operating results.
In addition, third-party applications and features on our customer platform may not meet the same quality standards that we apply to our own development efforts and, to the extent they contain bugs, vulnerabilities or defects, they may create disruptions in our customers’ use of our products, lead to data loss, unauthorized access to customer data, damage our brand and reputation and affect the continued use of our products, any of which could harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.
If our information technology systems, including our customer platform, have outages or fail due to defects or similar problems, and if we fail to correct any defect or other software problems, it could disrupt our internal operations or services provided to customers, and could reduce our revenue, increase our expenses, damage our reputation and adversely affect our cash flows and stock price.
We rely on our information technology systems, including the sustained and uninterrupted performance of our customer platform, to manage numerous aspects of our business, including marketing, sales, content management, customer service and other
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internal operations. Our information technology systems are an essential component of our business and any disruption could significantly limit our ability to manage and operate our business efficiently.
Our customer platform and its underlying infrastructure are inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors. We release modifications, updates, bug fixes and other changes to our software several times per day, without traditional human-performed quality control reviews for each release. While we seek to implement secure development practices, we cannot eliminate the risk that our applications may have vulnerabilities. From time to time, we find defects in our software and may discover in the future additional defects, outages, delays or cessations of service, performance and quality problems or may produce errors in connection with systems integrations, migration work or other causes, which could result in business disruptions and the process of remediating them could be more expensive, time-consuming, disruptive and resource intensive than planned. Such disruptions could adversely impact our internal operations and interrupt other processes. Delayed sales, lower margins or lost customers resulting from these disruptions could reduce our revenue, increase our expenses, damage our reputation and adversely affect our cash flows and stock price.
We are dependent on the continued availability of third-party data hosting and transmission services.
A significant portion of our operating cost is from our third-party data hosting and transmission services, including AWS, which hosts the substantial majority of our products and platform. If the costs for such services increase due to vendor consolidation, regulation, contract renegotiation, or otherwise, we may not be able to increase the fees for our customer platform or services to cover the changes, which could have a negative impact on our operating results.
Additionally, our customers need to be able to access our platform at any time, without interruption or degradation of performance. AWS runs its own platform that we access, and we are, therefore, vulnerable to service interruptions at AWS. We have experienced, and expect that in the future we may experience interruptions, delays and outages in service and availability due to a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, human or software errors, website hosting disruptions and capacity constraints. Moreover, as a result of the increasing use and deployment of AI technologies, infrastructure capacity requirements, including network capacity and, computing power and energy requirements, may increase which could lead to an increase in service interruptions we experience. In some instances, including because we do not control our service providers, we may not be able to identify the cause or causes of these problems within a period of time acceptable to our customers. Additionally, as our business continues to grow, to the extent that we do not effectively address capacity constraints, through our providers of cloud infrastructure, our results of operations may be adversely affected. In addition, any changes in service levels from our service providers may adversely affect our ability to meet our customers’ requirements, result in negative publicity which could harm our reputation and brand and may adversely affect the usage of our platform.
If we do not or cannot maintain the compatibility of our customer platform with third-party applications that our customers use in their businesses, our revenue will decline.
A significant percentage of our customers choose to integrate our platform with certain capabilities provided by third-party application providers using application programming interfaces (“APIs”) published by these providers. The functionality and popularity of our customer platform depends, in part, on our ability to integrate our platform with third-party applications and platforms, including CRM, CMS, e-commerce, call center, analytics and social media sites that our customers use and from which they obtain data. Third-party providers of applications and APIs may change the features of their applications and platforms, restrict our access to their applications and platforms, or alter the terms governing use of their applications and APIs and access to those applications and platforms in an adverse manner. Such changes could functionally limit or terminate our ability to use these third-party applications and platforms in conjunction with our platform, which could negatively impact our offerings and harm our business. If we fail to integrate our platform with new third-party applications and platforms that our customers use for marketing, sales, services, operations, commerce, or content management purposes, or fail to renew existing relationships pursuant to which we currently provide such integration, we may not be able to offer the functionality that our customers need, which would negatively impact our ability to generate new revenue or maintain existing revenue and adversely impact our business.
We rely on data provided by third parties, the loss of which could limit the functionality of our platform and disrupt our business.
Select functionality of our customer platform depends on our ability to deliver data, including search engine results and social media updates, provided by unaffiliated third parties, such as Meta, Google, LinkedIn and X. Some of this data is provided to us pursuant to third-party data sharing policies and terms of use, under data sharing agreements by third-party providers or by customer consent. In the future, any of these third parties could change its data sharing policies, including making them more restrictive, or alter its algorithms that determine the placement, display, and accessibility of search results and social media updates, any of which could result in the loss of, or significant impairment to, our ability to collect and provide useful data to our customers. These third parties could also interpret our, or our service providers’ data collection policies or practices as being inconsistent with their policies, which
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could result in the loss of our ability to collect this data for our customers. Any such changes could impair our ability to deliver data to our customers and could adversely impact select functionality of our platform, impairing the return on investment that our customers derive from using our solution, as well as adversely affecting our business and our ability to generate revenue.
Privacy concerns and end users’ acceptance of Internet behavior tracking may limit the applicability, use and adoption of our customer platform.
Privacy concerns may cause end users to resist providing the personal data necessary to allow our customers to use our platform effectively. We have implemented various features intended to enable our customers to better protect end user privacy, but these measures may not alleviate all potential privacy concerns and threats. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our platform. Privacy advocacy groups and the technology and other industries are considering various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by these groups’ policies and actions may limit the use and adoption of our customer platform and reduce overall demand for it, or lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities for any noncompliance or loss of any such action.
If our or our customers’ security measures are compromised or unauthorized access to data of our customers or their customers is otherwise obtained, our customer platform may be perceived as not being secure, our customers may be harmed and may curtail or cease their use of our platform, our reputation may be damaged and we may incur significant liabilities.
Our operations involve the storage and transmission of data of our customers and their customers, including personal data. Our storage is typically the sole source of record for portions of our customers’ businesses and end user data, such as initial contact information and online interactions. While we have security measures in place designed to protect our production and development environments and other systems, maintain the integrity of customer, company, and employee information, and prevent data loss, misappropriation and other security incidents and breaches, there can be no assurance that such security measures will be effective, security incidents or data breaches could result in unauthorized access to, loss of or unauthorized disclosure of this information, litigation, indemnity obligations and other possible liabilities, as well as negative publicity, which could damage our reputation, impair our sales and harm our customers and our business. Cyber-attacks and other malicious Internet-based activity continue to increase generally, and cloud-based platform providers of marketing services have been targeted. If our security measures, or those of our service providers, are compromised as a result of third-party action, employee, vendor or customer error or wrongful conduct, malfeasance, stolen or fraudulently obtained log-in credentials or otherwise, our reputation could be damaged, our business may be harmed and we could incur significant liability. Additionally, if third parties with whom we work, such as vendors or developers, violate applicable laws, our security policies or our acceptable use policy, such violations may also put our customers’ information at risk and could in turn have an adverse effect on our business. In addition, if the security measures of our customers or our service providers are compromised, even without any actual compromise of our own systems, we may face negative publicity or reputational harm if our customers or anyone else incorrectly attributes the blame for such security breaches to us or our systems. We may be unable to anticipate or prevent techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or to sabotage systems because they change frequently and generally are not detected until after an incident has occurred. As we increase our customer base and our brand becomes more widely known and recognized, we may become more of a target for third parties seeking to compromise our security systems or gain unauthorized access to our customers’ data. Additionally, we provide our employees with limited access restricted via just-in-time-access controls and least privilege access models to our databases, which store our customer data, and to our APIs to facilitate our rapid pace of product development and to support our customers. If such access, unauthorized access or our own operations, cause damage, destruction or loss (including, without limitation, because of actions by a bad actor, attempts to exfiltrate customer data which attempts we have experienced in the past and could experience in the future), our systems being compromised or unintentional or accidental disclosure, or destruction of our customers’ business data, their sales, lead generation, support and other business operations may be permanently harmed. As a result, our customers may bring claims against us for lost profits and other damages, or such concerns may cause us to further limit access by our development team. Additionally, in certain of our subscription agreements with our customers, we agree to indemnify these customers against claims by a third party alleging our breach of confidentiality obligations or our misuse of customer data in violation of the subscription agreement.
Cyber-attacks, denial-of-service attacks, ransomware attacks, supply chain attacks, business email compromises, computer malware, viruses, wrongful intrusions, data breaches social engineering (including phishing), and other compromises are prevalent in our industry, the industries of certain of our service providers and our customers' industries. Like other companies in our industry, we and our third party vendors have in the past experienced threats and security incidents related to our data and systems, and we may in the future experience other threats, compromises, breaches, or incidents. Attempts to disrupt or gain unauthorized access to our and our third-party vendors’ information systems from malicious third parties or insider threats may incorporate widely varying and frequently changing tactics, which may be enhanced or facilitated by AI. Our internal computer systems and those of our current and any future strategic collaborators, vendors, and other contractors or consultants are vulnerable to damage from cyber-attacks, attacks enhanced or facilitated by AI, computer viruses, unauthorized access, natural disasters, cybersecurity threats, terrorism, geopolitical conflict, war and telecommunication and electrical failures. Accordingly, if our cybersecurity measures or those of our service
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providers fail to protect against unauthorized access, attacks (which may include sophisticated cyber-attacks), compromise or the mishandling of data by our employees and contractors, then our reputation, customer trust, business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected. Cyber incidents have been increasing in sophistication and frequency and can include third parties gaining access to employee or customer data using stolen or inferred credentials, computer malware, viruses, spamming, phishing attacks, ransomware, vulnerabilities in first- or third-party code, card skimming code, and other deliberate attacks and attempts to gain unauthorized access. These attacks and activity are also being facilitated or enhanced by evolving technologies, including AI. This risk is increased by the difficulty of balancing rapid vulnerability patching and system availability in a large and rapidly-changing production environment. At times, we may be unable to patch all of our systems in a manner that strictly adheres to our internally prescribed timelines. The techniques used to sabotage or to obtain unauthorized access to our platform, systems, networks, or physical facilities in which data is stored or through which data is transmitted change frequently, and we may be unable to implement adequate preventative measures or stop security breaches while they are occurring. Because the techniques used by threat actors who may attempt to penetrate and sabotage our computer systems change frequently and may not be recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques. Additionally, with the expansion of remote work and resource access, there is an increased risk that we may experience cybersecurity-related events such as phishing attacks, exploitation of any cybersecurity flaws that may exist, an increase in the number of cybersecurity threats or attacks, and other security challenges as a result of most of our employees and our service providers continuing to work remotely from non-corporate managed networks. There is also a risk of potential increase in such attacks due to cyberwarfare in connection with the ongoing global conflicts, and this could adversely affect our and our suppliers' ability to maintain or enhance key cybersecurity and data protection measures. We believe we have previously been, and may in the future become, the target of cyber-attacks, incidents, or compromises by third parties seeking unauthorized access to our or our customers' data, systems, or infrastructure, or to disrupt our operations or ability to provide our services.
Additionally, it is also possible that unauthorized access to sensitive customer and business data may be obtained through inadequate use of security controls by our customers, suppliers or other vendors, using social engineering to cause an employee or contractor to install malware or exploiting known vulnerabilities. Like other businesses, we rely on hardware and software supplied by third-parties and, therefore, are susceptible to supply chain attacks. Such attacks are becoming increasingly common, and we may not be able to anticipate and prevent negative impacts from such an attack. If we are impacted by a supply chain attack, we could incur liability, our competitive position could be harmed and the further development and commercialization of our product and services could be hindered or delayed.
Recent cybersecurity incidents and compromises affecting large institutions, including an incident that affected us in 2024, suggest that the risk of such events is significant, even if privacy protection and security measures are implemented and enforced. A cyber-attack, incident, or compromise could result in a material disruption of our development programs and our business operations, whether due to a loss of our trade secrets or other proprietary information or other disruptions. These cyber-attacks could be carried out by threat actors of all types (including but not limited to nation states, organized crime, other criminal enterprises, individual actors, malicious insiders, and/or advanced persistent threat groups). In addition, we may experience intrusions on our physical premises by any of these threat actors. To the extent that any compromise, disruption or security breach were to result in a loss of, or damage to, our data or applications, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could incur liability, incur significant costs associated with remediation and the implementation of additional security measures, including costs to deploy additional personnel and protection technologies, train employees, and engage third-party experts and consultants, and our competitive position could be harmed. Any breach, loss, or compromise of personal data may also subject us to civil fines and penalties, or claims for damages either under the General Data Protection Regulation (the “EU GDPR”), the EU GDPR as incorporated into United Kingdom law, and relevant member state law in the European Union, other foreign laws, and other relevant state and federal privacy laws in the United States.
Many governments have enacted laws requiring companies to notify individuals of security incidents, including unauthorized access and transfers of certain types of personal data. In addition, the data processing agreement we execute with our customers contractually requires us to notify them of any personal data breach. Under payment card network rules and our contracts with our payment processors, if there is a data breach of payment resulting in the compromise of cardholder payment information that is stored by our direct payment card processing vendors, we could be liable to the payment card issuing banks for their cost of issuing new cards and related expenses depending on the cause of such data breach. Data breaches and other data security compromises experienced by our competitors, by our customers or by us may lead to public disclosures, which may lead to widespread negative publicity. Any security compromise in our industry, whether actual or perceived, could harm our reputation, erode customer confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, negatively impact our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect not to renew their subscriptions or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results.
There can be no assurance that any limitations of liability provisions in our contracts for a security breach would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. We also cannot be
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sure that our existing insurance coverage will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims, or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.
Risks Related to Intellectual Property
Our business may suffer if it is alleged or determined that our technology infringes the intellectual property rights of others.
The software industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and other intellectual and proprietary rights. Companies in the software industry are often required to defend against litigation claims based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. Many of our competitors and other industry participants have been issued patents and/or have filed patent applications and may assert patent or other intellectual property rights within the industry. Moreover, in recent years, individuals and groups that are non-practicing entities, commonly referred to as “patent trolls,” have purchased patents and other intellectual property assets for the purpose of making claims of infringement in order to extract settlements. From time to time, we may receive threatening letters or notices or may be the subject of claims that our services and/or platform and underlying technology infringe or violate the intellectual property rights of others. Responding to such claims, regardless of their merit, can be time consuming, costly to defend in litigation, divert management’s attention and resources, damage our reputation and brand and cause us to incur significant expenses. Our technologies may not be able to withstand any third-party claims against their use. Claims of intellectual property infringement, even those without merit, could require us to redesign our application, delay releases, enter into costly settlement or license agreements or pay costly damage awards, or face a temporary or permanent injunction prohibiting us from marketing or selling our platform. If we cannot or do not license the infringed technology on reasonable terms or at all, or substitute similar technology from another source, our revenue and operating results could be adversely impacted. Additionally, our customers may not purchase our customer platform if they are concerned that they may infringe third-party intellectual property rights. The occurrence of any of these events may have a material adverse effect on our business.
In our subscription agreements with customers, we agree to indemnify them against claims by a third party alleging infringement of a valid patent, registered copyright or registered trademark. Customers can also assert a common law indemnity claim or that any existing limitations of liability provisions in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate, or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. Our customers who are accused of intellectual property infringement may in the future seek indemnification from us under common law or other legal theories. If such claims are successful, or if we are required to indemnify or defend our customers from these or other claims, these matters could be disruptive to our business and management and have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition.
If we fail to adequately protect our proprietary rights, in the United States and abroad, our competitive position could be impaired and we may lose valuable assets, experience reduced revenue and incur costly litigation to protect our rights.
Our success is dependent, in part, upon protecting our proprietary technology. We rely on a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secret laws and contractual restrictions to establish and protect our proprietary rights in our products and services. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property may be inadequate. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property. Any of our trademarks or other intellectual property rights may be challenged by others or invalidated through administrative process or litigation. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain. Additionally, the intellectual property ownership and license rights surrounding AI technologies, which we are increasingly building into our product offerings, have not been fully addressed by U.S. courts or other federal, state or international laws or regulations, and the use or adoption of AI technologies in our products and services may expose us to claims of copyright infringement or other intellectual property infringement or misappropriation, violation of applicable laws or regulations, or breach of contractual obligations to which we are or may become subject. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy our technology and use information that we regard as proprietary to create products and services that compete with ours. Some license provisions protecting against unauthorized use, copying, transfer and disclosure of our offerings may be unenforceable under the laws of certain jurisdictions and foreign countries. In addition, the laws of some countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. To the extent we expand our international activities, our exposure to unauthorized copying and use of our technology and proprietary information may increase.
We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have strategic relationships and business alliances. No assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to and distribution of our products and proprietary information.
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Further, these agreements may not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our platform and offerings.
We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights. Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to protect our trade secrets. Such litigation could be costly, time consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation, could delay further sales or the implementation of our platform and offerings, impair the functionality of our platform and offerings, delay introductions of new features or enhancements, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our platform and offerings, or injure our reputation.
Our use of “open source” software could negatively affect our ability to offer our platform and subject us to possible litigation.
A substantial portion of our cloud-based platform incorporates so-called “open source” software, and we may incorporate additional open source software in the future. Open source software is generally freely accessible, usable and modifiable. Certain open source licenses may, in certain circumstances, require us to offer the components of our platform that incorporate the open source software for no cost, that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license. If an author or other third party that distributes open source software we use were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, including being enjoined from the offering of the components of our platform that contained the open source software and being required to comply with the foregoing conditions, which could disrupt our ability to offer the affected software. We could also be subject to suits by parties claiming ownership of what we believe to be open source software. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition and require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our products.
Risks Related to Government Regulation
We are subject to governmental regulation and other legal obligations, particularly related to privacy, data protection and information security, and our actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business. Compliance with such laws could also impair our efforts to maintain and expand our customer base and business lines, and thereby decrease our revenue.
Our handling of data across our products and services is subject to a variety of laws and regulations, including regulation by various government agencies, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ("FTC"), and various state, local and foreign agencies. We collect personal data and other data from our customers, prospects, partners, third-party providers and publicly available sources. We also handle personal data about our customers’ customers. We use this information to provide services to our customers, to support, expand and improve our business. We may also share customers’ personal data with third parties as authorized by the customer or as described in our privacy policy.
The U.S. federal and various state and foreign governments have adopted or proposed limitations on the collection, processing, distribution, use, storage and safeguarding of personal data. In the U.S., the FTC and many state attorneys general are applying federal and state privacy and consumer protection laws to impose standards for the online collection, use and dissemination of personal and other data. However, these obligations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other requirements or our practices. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with privacy or data security laws, policies, legal obligations or industry standards or any security incident that results in the unauthorized, disclosure, release or transfer of personal data or other customer data may result in governmental enforcement actions, litigation, fines and penalties and/or adverse publicity, and could cause our customers to lose trust in us, which could have an adverse effect on our reputation and business.
Laws and regulations governing privacy, data protection, cybersecurity, and online safety are rapidly evolving, and changes to such laws and regulations could require us to change features of our platform or restrict our customers’ ability to collect and use email addresses, page viewing data and other personal data, which may reduce demand for our platform or inhibit our improvement and development of our platform or its features, including AI models. Our failure to comply with federal, state and foreign privacy and cybersecurity laws and regulations could harm our ability to successfully operate our business and pursue our business goals.
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For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (collectively, the “CCPA”), among other things, requires covered companies to provide disclosures to California residents and afford such individuals the ability to opt out of the sales or sharing of their personal data. New and proposed regulations implementing the CCPA continue to evolve the standards of protection required by the CCPA. In addition to increasing our potential exposure to regulatory enforcement, the CCPA also provides for violations and a limited private right of action, which may increase our exposure to civil litigation.
Recently, plaintiffs’ attorneys have initiated a wave of demand letters, claims and class action lawsuits alleging companies’ use of online trackers, such as cookies and pixels, constitutes a violation of state wiretapping laws, primarily the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”). Plaintiffs’ attorneys have also expanded their claims and threatened claims to other privacy-related statutes that provide for private rights of action, including statutes governing text messaging and other commercial communications. So far, most of these claims have settled outside the courthouse, though a risk of costly litigation now exists for business practices that are common. We have been subject to these actions and may become subject to additional such actions in the future.
The landscape of privacy and cybersecurity regulation in the U.S. is increasingly complex. Numerous states have passed comprehensive privacy and data security laws, which impose obligations on covered businesses similar – but not identical – to those under the CCPA, and some states have passed privacy and cybersecurity laws governing specific sectors, technologies, or categories of personal data, such as laws regulating health data, children’s data, and online chatbots. Many of those states have also passed – or proposed to pass – laws and regulations that amend the standard of protection required by such laws. A number of other states have proposed similar privacy legislation, and the U.S. Congress has considered – and may reintroduce – federal privacy and cybersecurity legislation that may or may not preempt some or all of such U.S. state privacy laws, and may provide a private right of action. Through executive and legislative action, the federal government has also taken steps to restrict data transactions involving persons affiliated with China, Russia, Venezuela, and other countries of concern. For example, the Department of Justice January 8, 2025 rule on "Preventing Access to U.S. Sensitive Personal Data and Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern or Covered Persons,” prohibits the sharing of certain sensitive personal data categories to countries of concern. The regulations also restrict certain investment agreements, employment agreements and vendor agreements involving such data and countries of concern, absent specified cybersecurity controls. Actual or alleged violations of these regulations are punishable by criminal and/or civil sanctions. The evolving complexity of privacy and data security legislation in the U.S. may complicate our compliance efforts and further increase our risk of regulatory enforcement, penalties and litigation.
In addition, many foreign jurisdictions in which we do business, including the European Union, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and others have laws and regulations dealing with the collection and use of personal data obtained from their residents, which are more restrictive in certain respects than those in the U.S. Laws and regulations in these jurisdictions apply broadly to the collection, use, storage, disclosure and security of personal data that identifies or may be used to identify an individual. In relevant part, these foreign laws and regulations may affect our ability to engage in lead generation activities by imposing heightened requirements, such as affirmative opt-ins or other consent prior to sending commercial correspondence, obtaining leads or engaging in electronic tracking activities that aid our marketing and business intelligence. We may be required to modify our policies, procedures, and data processing measures in order to address requirements under these or other privacy, data protection, or cyber security regimes, and may face claims, litigation, investigations, or other proceedings regarding them and may incur related liabilities, expenses, costs, and operational losses.