Yamini Rangan steps down after five years as chief executive. Halligan says he will rebuild the company’s product, go-to-market and culture around AI.
HubSpot’s board has appointed co-founder Brian Halligan as chief executive officer, effective November 12, 2026. He replaces Yamini Rangan, who has stepped down as CEO and left the board. Rangan will stay with the company through December 1 to help with the handover.
The company announced a second change at the same time. Chief Financial Officer Kate Bueker will retire on February 11, 2027, after eight years in the role. Karen Burgess, currently senior vice president and CFO of Adobe’s Creativity & Productivity business unit, will join HubSpot on November 30 as executive vice president of finance and take over as CFO when Bueker leaves. Bueker will remain an adviser through the end of 2027.
HubSpot also reaffirmed the fourth-quarter and full-year 2026 guidance it issued with third-quarter results on November 4.
A founder returns
Halligan started HubSpot in 2005 with Dharmesh Shah, who is still the company’s chief technology officer. He ran the company for 16 years, through its 2014 IPO, and has been on the board since its founding. He handed the CEO job to Rangan in September 2021, after a snowmobile accident earlier that year, and moved to executive chairman.
HubSpot is calling the change a refounding. In the company’s announcement, Halligan said he plans to rethink the business from the ground up across product, go-to-market and culture, and described the work ahead as the company’s third chapter. “This is a refounding, and I can’t wait to start!” he said.
Board Chairperson Lorrie Norrington said the board is unanimous in backing Halligan’s plan. According to the Boston Globe, she also pointed to his knowledge of HubSpot’s customers and his view of how AI can drive growth. The Globe reported that Halligan told employees in an email, “Let’s put the Hub back in HubSpot,” a reference to the company’s Cambridge, Massachusetts roots.
Rangan’s tenure
Rangan joined HubSpot in 2020 as its first chief customer officer and became CEO the following year. During her time in the role, the customer base grew from 135,000 to more than 311,000. Revenue rose from $1.3 billion in 2021 to an expected $3.7 billion this year. The company credits her with turning HubSpot into a multi-product customer platform, moving it upmarket and building AI into its products.
In the announcement, Rangan said leading the company had been a privilege and expressed confidence in Halligan.
The backdrop
The change follows a difficult stretch for HubSpot’s stock. The Globe reported that shares rose about 8% to roughly $218 in Thursday morning trading, compared with a peak above $800 in early 2025. That puts the company’s market value near $10 billion, against more than $30 billion when Halligan left the CEO role in 2021.
The business has kept growing. Revenue for the first nine months of 2026 was up nearly 20% to $2.7 billion, according to the Globe. But fourth-quarter guidance of 12% revenue growth came in below analyst expectations and prompted several downgrades. In October, HubSpot said it would cut 660 jobs, about 7% of its workforce.
The Globe described the investor concern as a question about HubSpot’s core market: whether small and mid-sized businesses will use AI to build their own applications in place of buying marketing, sales and service software. That concern is not unique to HubSpot and has weighed on a number of software companies this year.
A CFO from Adobe
Burgess has been at Adobe since 2002. The unit she currently oversees is a $20 billion business with more than 1 billion monthly active users, according to HubSpot. She said in the announcement that she intends to bring discipline to capital allocation while investing for growth.
What marketing leaders should watch
HubSpot has not yet said what the refounding means for its products or pricing. The announcement gives no roadmap details, and customers will likely have to wait for Halligan’s first public comments or the next earnings call for specifics.
Several questions are open for organizations that run on HubSpot or are evaluating it:
- Product direction. HubSpot’s filings refer to an “agentic customer platform.” How quickly the company shifts investment toward agents, and what happens to existing Hub products as it does, will matter for roadmap planning.
- Pricing and packaging. The forward-looking statements in the release list changes to pricing, packaging and go-to-market among the areas where the company’s plans carry risk. Teams with renewals coming up in 2027 may want to ask their account teams what is planned.
- Upmarket commitment. Rangan’s tenure was marked by a push toward larger customers. Halligan built the company on small and mid-sized businesses. Whether the balance changes is something enterprise buyers will want to hear addressed directly.
- Continuity. Shah remains CTO, and the CFO handover runs over several months, which points to some stability in the leadership team during the transition.
For marketing leaders more broadly, the move is another sign of how much pressure AI is putting on established martech vendors to rethink their platforms, and of how quickly boards are willing to act when they want a different approach.
