HubSpot cuts nearly 660 jobs, about 7% of staff, and stands by its 2026 forecast

HubSpot is laying off nearly 660 employees, about 7% of its workforce, in a reorganization its chief executive told staff will make the company flatter and faster as it shifts to delivering results for customers with artificial intelligence.

The Cambridge, Mass., maker of marketing and sales software disclosed the plan in a securities filing before the stock market opened on Tuesday, along with a memo to employees from Chief Executive Yamini Rangan. Its board approved the plan on Oct. 1. HubSpot expects the job cuts to be substantially complete by the end of the first quarter of 2027, subject to local laws and consultation requirements, and to make substantially all of the related cash payments by June 30, 2027.

HubSpot also said it was sticking with the forecasts it gave in August for the third quarter and for 2026. Those call for third-quarter revenue of $924 million to $925 million and full-year revenue of $3.678 billion to $3.686 billion, with full-year operating income of $762 million to $766 million on the adjusted basis the company uses for its outlook. The third quarter ended Sept. 30, and HubSpot has not yet reported the results.

HubSpot shares fell 1.6% to $217.09 on Tuesday and were little changed after hours, according to cnbc.com market data. The stock is down nearly 53% over the past 12 months, Benzinga reported.

What the cuts will cost

HubSpot estimates charges of about $65 million to $75 million, mostly future cash payments for severance, notice periods, employee transition and benefits, with the majority recorded in the fourth quarter of 2026. The charges will count against its results under standard accounting rules but will be left out of the adjusted measures, including the forecast it reaffirmed. Even the low end of that range is larger than the $43.3 million of operating income HubSpot reported under those standard rules for the second quarter, by TickerGrove's comparison.

Rangan's memo says departing employees will generally receive 20 weeks of base pay plus one week for each year of service, up to 30 weeks, along with six months of job-search help and, in the U.S., five months of health coverage. Terms vary by country.

HubSpot says AI efficiency is not the reason

Artificial intelligence is central to how HubSpot explains the reorganization, but the company says the cuts are not about AI making work more efficient. Rangan wrote that over the past year HubSpot shifted its strategy "from building software that helps customers grow to delivering outcomes for them with AI," and that it now needs to organize product teams around customer goals rather than product lines, with fewer management layers. "This is not driven by AI-related efficiencies," she wrote. "This is not simply a cost-cutting exercise."

That message sits alongside what HubSpot told investors less than three weeks earlier. At its Sept. 17 analyst day, Chief Financial Officer Kate Bueker said the company saw "meaningful opportunities to deliver leverage across the organization" as it changes how it operates internally, including in research and development, where she said its internal AI agent platform lets it keep investing more efficiently. HubSpot raised its long-term target that day, aiming for an adjusted operating margin of 30% by 2030, compared with the 21% it expects this year. On Tuesday, it said it remains confident in those longer-term targets.

This is the second time in under four years that HubSpot has cut about 7% of its staff. The January 2023 plan, which HubSpot said was designed to reduce operating costs, also consolidated office leases and carried expected charges of $72 million to $105 million, most of them for the leases. HubSpot's headcount was still growing last year: it had 8,882 full-time employees at the end of 2025, up from 8,246 a year earlier.

Fair Isaac cuts deeper

Fair Isaac, the company behind the FICO credit score, disclosed a proportionally larger cut after Tuesday's close. In a filing, it said management committed on Oct. 1 to eliminating about 15% of positions across the company by reducing layers in the organization, simplifying its structure, optimizing processes and tools, and "integrating AI-driven product development." Where HubSpot said its cuts were not driven by AI efficiencies, Fair Isaac named AI-driven product development as one of its aims. Affected employees began hearing this week.

Fair Isaac expects pre-tax charges of about $27 million for severance and related costs in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Sept. 30, and expects the plan to be substantially complete by the end of its fiscal third quarter of 2027, which ends in June 2027. It did not say how many people will lose their jobs. It employed 3,811 people at the end of September 2025, so 15% would be about 570, by TickerGrove's calculation, though the company counted positions rather than people.

The stock closed up less than 1% at $695.46 before the filing and barely moved after hours. That is less than half its high of the past 52 weeks, a slide that has come as federal housing regulators move to put a rival score from the three big credit bureaus on equal footing in mortgage lending.