HubSpot announced the acquisition of XFunnel, a 10-month-old Israeli startup developing tools to help marketers adapt to the rise of AI-powered search and answer engines. This deal marks HubSpot’s first acquisition in Israel.
Founded less than a year ago by Beeri Amiel and Neri Bluman,
“Marketing is moving from traditional workflows to AI-native operations,” Bluman wrote on LinkedIn, noting that XFunnel’s first mission was to understand “how marketing actually works in the AI era – not the hype, not the theory.”
According to both companies, the relationship between HubSpot and XFunnel began when HubSpot approached the startup as a potential customer. This first contact turned into an investment and ultimately an acquisition agreement. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
HubSpot, valued at around $26 billion, said the deal was part of its broader initiative known as Loop Marketing, a new playbook designed to help businesses “attract, engage and convert customers” on AI-powered platforms. The company noted that AI-generated leads now convert three times better than traditional search leads.
“People now get answers directly from large language models, and this change has made response engine optimization (AEO) essential,” HubSpot said in a blog post. XFunnel’s technology helps brands monitor and improve how they appear in AI-generated responses.
Angela DeFranco, general manager of HubSpot and vice president of product for Marketing Hub, said the acquisition will give marketers better visibility into how their brand appears in AI systems. “As AI changes the way people find and interact with businesses, we want to make this change easier for our customers,” she said.
For XFunnel, the acquisition caps a remarkably rapid trajectory. Created just ten months ago, the startup launched its first customer partnerships just six months after its creation. The company’s co-founders said the rise of AI tools had “triggered a shift that is changing the way marketing is done at an unprecedented pace.”
In a statement on the XFunnel website, Amiel and Bluman described their alignment with HubSpot as “a partnership to continue building the future of marketing together.” They highlighted their shared interest in response engine optimization, an emerging discipline aimed at ensuring brands appear effectively in AI-generated responses.
Bluman added that joining HubSpot will allow the team to continue its mission “on the biggest stage,” leveraging the company’s scale, with more than 270,000 businesses using its platform, to deeply integrate AI into marketing workflows.
