All this and more in this week’s edition of The Hypha Wire, from Hypha HubSpot Development.
Happy Friday everyone! Welcome to another edition of The Hypha Wire—the last of 2025.
We’re really creeping toward that finish line, with only a handful of working days left. As I’ve said before (and likely every year before it), time really flew by, and I can’t believe we’re about to close the book on this calendar year.
For a bit of fun in this last edition, I thought I’d share some 2025 recaps from across the web to help us encapsulate the vibes this year.
Take a look at these pieces for a walk down memory lane.
What trends did you notice in 2025? What were your highlights? Let me know in the replies!
-Sage Levene, VP of Marketing, Hypha HubSpot Development
Open Mic
Will 2026 Be the Year When AI Connects Your Tech Stack?
By Phil Stott, Head of Client Success, Hypha HubSpot Development
With the end of the year approaching, it’s time for a prediction for 2026.
But first, some context: If you’ve been a semi-regular reader of these newsletters over the past few months, you’ll know that many of our team—and me in particular—are all in on the AI revolution. From automated note takers to design and coding assistants to agents that can handle basic customer service functions, we’ve spent a lot of time testing, living with, and thinking about where AI might be headed, in our industry and beyond.
Which leads me to my prediction: 2026 is going to be the year of interoperability. And it’s going to be powered by AI.
Since the advent of ChatGPT, the thing I’ve wanted AI to do more than anything else is communicate between software systems. To not just generate an answer from whatever is in its training data—be it the whole internet or a tightly-controlled corpus in a chat environment—but to have it assemble reports or carry out tasks based on a variety of live sources: your customer data from HubSpot, your sales reports in Shopify or Salesforce, and even company financials, sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere. All available through a single interface that can both parse and update all of the systems in question, upon command. That’s interoperability.
So why do I think it’s going to take off in 2026? Because I’m cheating a little—it’s basically already here.
If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend getting a paid Claude or ChatGPT seat, and then connecting it to your HubSpot account. Both platforms have built integrations that are simple to connect, and that give you instant access to an assistant that can find almost any answer within your HubSpot data.
While the connections are read-only, at least for now, they open up the possibility of getting so much more out of your data without ever having to go into HubSpot. Want to know the status of your open deals? Just ask—the AI assistant can find the information, tell you which ones are existing customers, and even trace previous orders to examine buying behaviors over time.
Of course, the usual caveat applies: verification of the tool’s output is essential because of the known issues with AI “hallucinations.” That makes it harder to rely on for more sophisticated tasks where it can be time-consuming to check its work.
But it’s also worth taking a pause for a moment to reflect on the fact that we live in a world where we can talk to a machine and have it independently perform tasks, with no manual intervention needed. It’s not that much of a stretch, then, to imagine that same machine talking simultaneously to not one, but several tools across your tech stack—a shift that has the potential to radically reshape how we interact with the data at disposal, and give us significantly more time to act on it, rather than manage it.
Ultimately, my hope is that the AI revolution helps us to streamline how we work, rather than adding layers of complexity to each of the solutions we use. In the first wave, we’ve seen tech providers rushing to incorporate AI-powered features within their platforms—with massively varying degrees of success. But siloed tools with access only to data within a single platform are significantly less useful than a single platform that can connect all of your data, regardless of where it lives. Which is why 2026 won’t be about who has the most AI features, but about who can put a truly connected intelligence to work across their entire business.
The TikTok saga is finally coming to a close. TikTok has signed a deal to sell its U.S. operations for around $14 billion, with the agreement set to close on January 22.
“Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will collectively own 45% of the U.S. entity, which will be called ‘TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.’
“Nearly one-third of the company will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors, and nearly 20% will be retained by ByteDance.
“Between the lines: The U.S. joint venture will be responsible for U.S. data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance, per the memo.”
It seems bleaker times are on the horizon for those who work in the DEI space, and sadly, those who benefit from DEI initiatives.
“Lucas told Reuters that enforcement may target a host of initiatives companies have deployed to create, cater to or advertise to any race or gender-based group, including employee resource groups designed to be safe spaces where employees can speak candidly.”
Hypha Highlights
Email deliverability can make or break your outreach efforts, especially when working with a new domain. Whether launching a startup or expanding your business with a new domain, proper warm-up is crucial for establishing sender reputation, ensuring your emails reach their intended recipients, and optimizing your email lead generation efforts.
Below, we provide actionable guidance on effectively warming up your domain to help boost email deliverability.
I stumbled upon this new (to me) HubSpot showcase page on LinkedIn called ‘HubSpot Help.’ I gave them a follow and have been seeing their activity in my feed, commenting on posts from people having issues or questions about HubSpot.
If you’re ever stuck and want to take your issue to the LinkedIn community, also give the page a tag and see if they can help you out!
AI in Action
News, updates and tools from the AI industry.
It’s busy out there! Let’s take a look:
A lot going on in OpenAI world this week. The company launched a new ChatGPT Images model (GPT Image 1.5) that OpenAI says generates images up to 4x faster with improved editing capabilities. OpenAI also released GPT-5.2-Codex, described as its most advanced coding model with stronger cybersecurity capabilities, and launched an App Directory allowing developers to submit interactive apps within ChatGPT’s interface, connecting to services like Spotify and DoorDash. Plus, according to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is pursuing a new fundraising round that could raise up to $100 billion and value the company at as much as $830 billion.
Google released Gemini 3 Flash, which the company describes as offering frontier-level intelligence at Flash-level speed and cost. According to Google, Gemini 3 Flash outperforms Gemini 2.5 Pro while being 3x faster and using 30% fewer tokens on average.
Manus AI released version 1.6, featuring Manus 1.6 Max, which the company says delivers a 19.2% increase in user satisfaction in double-blind testing through improved task success rates and enhanced capabilities.
A group of 18 Hollywood industry insiders launched the Creators Coalition on AI (CCAI), backed by over 500 signatories. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the coalition aims to serve as a central coordinating hub for establishing shared standards and ethical protections around AI use in entertainment, guided by four core pillars: transparency and compensation for data use, job protection, guardrails against misuse and deepfakes, and safeguarding humanity in the creative process.
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Instacart over its AI-driven pricing tool, which allows retailers to experiment with different prices, according to Reuters citing sources familiar with the matter. The probe follows a study by advocacy groups showing shoppers saw vastly different prices for identical items at the same stores, with some finding grocery prices up to 23% higher than others for the exact same items at the same time, though Instacart says the pricing tests were randomized rather than based on individual user data.
“In the past year, we’ve seen rapid advancement of model intelligence and convergence on agent scaffolding. But there’s still a gap: agents often lack the domain expertise and specialized knowledge needed for real-world work. We think Skills are the solution—a minimal form factor for packaging procedural knowledge that agents can dynamically load. It’s a portable, composable approach to giving one agent capabilities across domains. In this talk, we’ll share how we built Skills at Anthropic, the network effects we’re observing, and where we believe this leads: agents writing their own Skills from experience. Our thesis: equipping agents for real-world work means building reusable expertise.”
How can we help you?
Case Study: Shopify to HubSpot Integration
A wellness brand selling professional skincare to spas had reps spending weeks nurturing B2B relationships before landing $2,000+ opening orders. But their HubSpot–Shopify integration treated every transaction the same. When those deals closed, Orders were created with no link to the Deals reps had been working. Attribution disappeared.
We fixed this by separating B2B opening orders from standard transactions. When an order comes through, it’s automatically tied back to the existing Deal, marked Closed Won, and synced with clean line items. Reps see only their pipeline—no manual updates.
The result: full attribution from first touch to closed wholesale account, automated commissions, and a team that now builds its own workflows.
If your B2B sales run through e-commerce and the story gets lost, that’s fixable. Hypha helps you keep it straight.
