Marketing software maker HubSpot Inc. announced Wednesday that it plans to acquire the business data provider Clearbit to enhance its trove of data that will fuel the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

Founded in 2015, Clearbit launched a tool that provides discovery for an email address and returns with a person’s name, job title, company and social media accounts. This could be useful for people inundated with sales leads who need to weed out which ones are from executives they need to jump on immediately and which ones they could plausibly ignore.

Over time, the company has built up its platform to support even more types of data that give businesses a better understanding of their potential customers and their intent. It gathers public data from the web and its own proprietary data and uses large language model AI to convert unstructured information into insights that can be then delivered to marketers and operations to target their interests.

“To cut through the noise with deep relevance, businesses need reliable, high-quality data about their customers,” said HubSpot Chief Executive Yamini Rangan. “That means enriching your company’s internal customer data with real-time external context. Clearbit has made it its mission to collect rich and useful data about millions of companies.”

By joining forces with Clearbit, HubSpot will be able to bring all of that data to its recently announced generative AI and predictive analysis services that it is bringing to its customers. These new features will require vast amounts of data to improve results and provide the most accurate delivery of information to users.

According to the announcement, Clearbit’s platform serves more than 400,000 users and draws its data from more than 20 million companies and 500 million decision-makers to identify the best prospects, identify intent and connect with customers. Using its curated dataset of more than 100 filmographic, demographic and technographic datapoints from public and private sources, the company can form highly accurate information graphs about these people.

With the data completely integrated within HubSpot, Rangan said, not only will users be able to direct engagements within the platform, but they also will be able to understand customer activity outside the platform and around the web.

“And, when it’s time to reach out, imagine using generative AI powered by all of this rich data to create personal messages,” Rangan said. “That will be possible with Clearbit and HubSpot.”

According to Rangan, Clearbit data is already part of HubSpot as part of a previous integration, so there will be no lengthy or disjointed experience for customers to get value from the acquisition once it is completed. The service has also been available as part of the App Marketplace since 2019.

Although HubSpot did not reveal the details of the acquisition, it’s expected to close in the next few months. Clearbit will remain available as a standalone product and over time it will be integrated into HubSpot’s own offering.

Image: HubSpot