What it means to grow at work is evolving. Growth used to be synonymous with promotions or upward mobility. As AI becomes more embedded in our tools and workflows, it’s also starting to shape how we grow. As a result, it’s just as much about gaining new skills, adapting quickly, and elevating performance within current roles.
At HubSpot, we’re exploring this shift from a few different angles. From the start of 2025, we made a company-wide commitment to becoming an AI-fluent organization, not just by deploying tools, but by cultivating the right culture and mindset. That meant helping employees see AI as an opportunity rather than a threat, creating space for experimentation, and reinforcing that learning to work with AI is core to growth, not separate from it.
In this paper, we’re starting with looking at growth through the lens of impact, one of the most visible and measurable dimensions. How is AI changing what people can achieve in their day-to-day roles? And what does that tell us about the potential for deeper, longer-term growth?
Already, we’re seeing promising signs connecting AI usage to growth. According to our internal Employee Experience survey, employees who feel comfortable using AI are 1.3x more likely to say they understand how to grow their careers at HubSpot. That kind of confidence matters. It suggests AI isn’t just helping people move faster, it’s helping to unlock real growth opportunities.
While many companies are still figuring out how to meaningfully integrate AI, HubSpot is already seeing high usage and visible impact. So far in 2025, at least 98% of employees have used an AI tool on the job, while over 85% have used AI on a monthly basis. And 84% of employees say they feel comfortable and confident using AI in their day-to-day work, according to internal survey data.
This momentum isn’t accidental. Across the U.S., only 33% of employees feel their workplace is taking action on integrating AI into their practices, according to a recent Gallup poll. At HubSpot, the shift began with a strong top-down encouragement from leadership. Our CEO Yamini Rangan and the executive team set the tone early by modeling curiosity, prioritizing experimentation, and normalizing AI usage, creating a culture where trying new tools wasn’t just accepted, but expected.
That early leadership signal laid the foundation for the enablement that followed. From there, we invested in giving employees the tools and support they needed to grow their skills. That includes GrowDAI, a two-day deep dive into foundational AI skills, and MondAI Minute, a weekly series where employees share how they’re putting AI into practice. We also offer an AI program through Degreed, made up of several curated courses and ending with an AI fluency assessment. Given that we position ourselves as an AI-first company, both in our product strategy and core business processes, we see it as essential to build the same fluency internally.
“One thing I deeply appreciate about HubSpot is the company’s investment in helping teams learn and experiment with AI. We've been given not just the time and space to explore, but also the tools and resources. This kind of support has made it much easier to build confidence, stay curious, and think creatively about how AI can enhance our work.” - HubSpot Employee
And the investment is being felt: 91% of HubSpotters say their department is operating with urgency to adopt and integrate AI. But the goal isn’t just adoption, its transformation. What does it really mean to grow with AI?
It’s easy to frame AI as a tool for efficiency, fewer clicks, faster drafts, quicker answers. But growth is a different kind of outcome. It’s not just about speed or volume. It’s about impact, building new capabilities, regaining momentum after setbacks, and finding clarity in moments of uncertainty.
That’s why at HubSpot, we’ve been thinking about AI not just as a productivity tool, but as a growth enabler. Growth isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s one of the core pillars of our People Strategy, alongside clarity, belonging, and recognition. As AI becomes more embedded in how we work, we’ve started asking a deeper question: can it also become a driver of how we grow?
AI Boosts Sales Attainment
One of the clearest ways to observe growth in action, especially in fast-paced roles, is through sales attainment. It's a sharp, measurable signal of performance and momentum. With that in mind, we examined how AI adoption relates to attainment among HubSpot reps.
In our earlier research on clarity, we found that mission clarity, understanding how your work connects to the company’s purpose, was strongly linked to performance. Sales reps with high mission clarity had 27% higher attainment than those with low clarity, reinforcing the idea that alignment drives results.
Building on these insights from our clarity research, we wanted to see whether using AI could drive similar attainment improvements, especially by looking at how individual sales reps changed over time. We tracked reps’ attainment during the month they started using AI and again one month later to see if their performance improved.
To create a fair comparison, we assigned non-AI users a randomly selected ‘start month’ that mirrored the timing of AI adoption. This allowed us to compare performance changes over the same type of timeframe.
The results were clear. Reps who began using AI showed meaningful gains after just one month compared to prior performance. And they didn’t just progress relative to their own past performance; they also outperformed peers not using AI.
Interestingly, we also found that reps who chose to use AI started from a higher baseline, hinting they may have been more proactive from the start. They weren’t just trying to catch up, they were looking to level up.
This early signal suggests that AI, like clarity, may help people focus more on what matters, move with more confidence, and see meaningful results.
AI has already shown it can help sales reps build momentum. But its value may go further, it may also support growth or performance rebounds after setbacks.
We focused on a group of underperformers: employees who received an “Unsatisfactory” or “Needs Improvement” rating in the second half of 2024. We then tracked whether their performance improved in the first half of 2025, and whether AI use made a difference.
The data suggests it did. Among this group, those who used AI during the review period were more likely to improve their performance ratings by the next cycle. They also tended to use a wider range of tools, and to stick with them more consistently across the review period.
For employees looking to get back on track, AI may be more than just a tool, it could be an important enabler to help them turn things around.
Across roles and outcomes, the data tells a consistent story: AI isn’t just making work faster, it’s helping people perform better. From sales reps reaching higher attainment to underperformers improving their ratings, the impact of AI is showing up in ways that go beyond efficiency. It’s supporting focus, clarity, momentum, and in many cases, real growth.
So if AI has this kind of potential, the next question becomes: how do we make sure it sticks? Impact like this doesn’t come from access alone, it comes from culture. Teams need more than tools; they need the support, trust, and mindset to grow with them.
That’s why at HubSpot, we’ve focused not just on adoption, but on building an AI-first mindset. In a recent LinkedIn post, our CEO Yamini Rangan outlines what it takes to create this kind of environment. As she put it, it’s not just about using AI, it’s about embedding the practices that help teams adopt it meaningfully and sustainably.
Some of the ways we’re doing that include:
“HubSpot's been doing so great at pivoting quickly to ride the AI wave. With all the employee upskilling, it feels like I'm part of something bigger. It makes me want to push myself in my role to contribute and stay ahead too.” – HubSpot Employee
As we continue to learn from how employees are using AI, one of our next priorities will be understanding why AI makes a difference, and what specific practices or use cases are driving these outcomes. That insight will be key to guiding both enablement and strategy going forward.
The takeaway here is clear: the technology is only one part of the equation. At HubSpot, we set the tone early in our AI journey with a clear cultural commitment to AI, grounded in curiosity, trust, and a growth mindset and are seeing real benefits as a result.