Summary:
ApolloNEXT 2025 was a high-energy, insight-packed event during SF Tech Week that showcased how Apollo is redefining GTM with its new AI-powered platform. From intelligent outbound orchestration to real-time data enrichment and seamless HubSpot syncing, the innovations unveiled made it clear: the future of sales is faster, smarter, and more connected. Here's what stood out, and why we're doubling down on our Apollo partnership.
Apollo CEO, Tim Zheng and Growth CEO, Christopher Nault before ApolloNEXT kicked off.
Introduction: A Milestone in GTM Innovation
Earlier this month during SF Tech Week, Apollo.io hosted its first-ever in-person user conference, ApolloNEXT 2025, at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. As the CEO of Growth, I attended ApolloNEXT to stay on the cutting edge of go-to-market (GTM) strategy and came away impressed by the bold innovations unveiled. The event—billed as “the GTM event of the year”—brought together sales and marketing leaders, RevOps professionals, and founders all eager to learn how AI is transforming the way we find and engage prospects. From a high-energy kickoff by comedian Ross Pomerantz (aka “Corporate Bro”) to visionary keynotes by Apollo’s leadership, ApolloNEXT delivered an exciting glimpse into the future of GTM and account-based marketing (ABM) in the AI era.
In this post, I’ll recap the broad highlights and key takeaways from ApolloNEXT 2025. I’ll also share why these developments reinforce Growth’s commitment to our Apollo partnership for data enrichment and outbound plays in sync with HubSpot as our source of truth.
Apollo Unveils an AI-Powered GTM Platform
The centerpiece of ApolloNEXT was the Product Keynote where Apollo’s CEO Tim Zheng and CPO Bela Stepanova introduced Apollo’s AI GTM Platform, a fully “agentic” end-to-end system for revenue teams.
In plain terms, Apollo announced the launch of the industry’s first unified go-to-market platform driven by intelligent AI agents that collaborate with your team across every stage of the sales funnel.
Zheng noted that traditionally GTM has been too fragmented and manual, but Apollo’s new approach “makes world-class go-to-market as simple as texting a friend” by bringing outbound, inbound, deal execution, and data enrichment together in one AI-driven workflow. In practice, this means tasks that used to take hours of skilled work can now be handled in minutes by Apollo’s AI co-pilot.
Don't Worry: Growth will be releasing resources to dig more into that area soon.
Key innovations unveiled: Apollo’s platform is composed of several AI-assisted modules that cover the full customer journey:
- Agentic Outbound: Advanced tools to boost prospecting productivity – for example, a Parallel Dialer to call multiple leads efficiently and an AI Call Prep feature that briefs reps before calls. Apollo also rolled out a new Deliverability Suite to maximize email engagement. (In fact, Apollo reported that its latest email infrastructure improvements like IP rotation and bot detection have already driven 30% higher open rates for users.
- Agentic Inbound: Capabilities to capture and respond to inbound interest faster – including contact-level tracking of website visitors, automatic form enrichment (filling in missing lead info), and smart scheduling/routing to get hot leads in front of sales quickly. Please note: Apollo's use of the term Inbound varies slightly from HubSpot's ... a rose is a rose but it gets confusing.
- Agentic Deal Execution: Tools to help reps close deals faster – for example, AI-powered meeting insights (think real-time call transcription and highlight reels), auto-generated follow-up emails after meetings, and deep CRM integrations to keep everything updated.
- Agentic Data Enrichment: Always-on data quality powered by AI – Apollo introduced a new “Waterfall Enrichment” capability that checks multiple data providers to verify and update contact and company records in real time. This is huge for keeping databases fresh. For instance, Apollo can now layer in third-party email verification (e.g. running addresses through ZeroBounce) to boost accuracy.
In short, Apollo’s data engine is becoming a “living” database that constantly enriches and cleans your CRM data.
This unified platform, internally nicknamed “Vibe GTM” , really resonated with the audience. It’s not just another point solution – it’s Apollo reimagining itself as the central nervous system for GTM. As an Apollo partner, I was excited to see how these features directly tackle pain points we hear from clients: scattered data, slow lead follow-up, and reps struggling to personalize at scale. Apollo’s answer is an AI co-pilot that orchestrates these tasks seamlessly in the background.
Turning Signals into Sales with AI Orchestration
One memorable session was “Turning Signals into Sales: AI-Powered Inbound + Outbound Orchestration.” Apollo’s COO Matt Curl and product leaders showcased how Apollo’s AI can interpret buying signals and trigger the right outreach plays at the right time. Modern revenue teams have a wealth of intent data – website visits, content clicks, engagement with emails – and Apollo is leveraging that to coordinate multi-channel follow-ups automatically.
For example, Apollo can track key intent indicators like when a prospect visits your pricing page or engages with a piece of content. These signals can immediately feed into Apollo’s workflow engine: high-intent prospects get added to a tailored sequence (email, call, LinkedIn touch, etc.) without reps doing any manual prospecting. The panel discussed how AI-driven lead scoring and Apollo’s rules engine help prioritize the hottest leads so sales can strike while the iron is hot. Essentially, Apollo is bridging the gap between inbound* and outbound – no more lost leads slipping through the cracks.
* Apollo defining Inbound as all the things you do to drive qualified traffic to your website and focus on form fills.
As an attendee, I saw this as a blueprint for GTM efficiency (GTME): use AI to react to intent in real time and engage prospects with relevant outreach across channels. This is particularly valuable for ABM strategies where timely, personalized touches can convert interest into pipeline. ApolloNEXT made it clear that AI isn’t just hype; it’s actively orchestrating sales plays that turn data signals into booked meetings fast.
Every Call Becomes Pipeline with Conversational AI
Another highlight was the live demo of Apollo’s conversation intelligence during the session “Converting Every Call into Pipeline: AI-Powered Conversational Insights in Action.” Apollo’s team, along with sales leaders like Paula Urrutia (Apollo’s Director of Sales), showed how their platform now leverages AI to make the most of every sales call.
Live example of how Apollo's new AI Assistant is super powered when connected to HubSpot.
Imagine your Zoom/ Fathom or phone calls automatically transcribed and analyzed by AI – Apollo’s system can do that, extracting key insights such as pain points mentioned, objections, or buying signals from the conversation. The AI then recommends next steps: for example, suggesting a follow-up email with content related to a topic the prospect asked about, or creating a task in HubSpot to schedule a next meeting. One feature I loved is AI Call Recaps – after a call, Apollo can generate a summary and even draft follow-up emails for the rep. This ensures nothing gets missed and follow-ups happen while the conversation is still fresh.
By turning call data into structured insights, Apollo helps reps “show up” to meetings better prepared and leave with clear action items. Over time, these AI-driven call analyses can coach reps on what talk tracks work best, which is like having a personal sales coach for every team member. The takeaway: with Apollo’s conversational AI, every sales call (whether inbound demo or outbound cold call) has the potential to drive pipeline because follow-up is smarter and immediate. For Growth’s team, which frequently coaches sales orgs, this capability will be a game-changer in boosting rep effectiveness.
Fueling Pipeline with Living Data (Enrichment in Action)
Data was a big theme throughout ApolloNEXT. In the session “Fueling Pipeline with Living Data: AI-Powered Enrichment in Action,” Apollo underscored the importance of clean, enriched data in driving growth. Revenue leaders like Apollo’s SVP of RevOps Henry Mizel talked about how data decay is inevitable – people change jobs, companies move offices or get acquired, etc. Relying on static data means your CRM deteriorates over time. Apollo’s solution (as briefly mentioned earlier) is the new Waterfall Enrichment and other AI-driven enrichment workflows to keep data fresh continuously.
Practically, this means Apollo can monitor your HubSpot (or other CRM) records and automatically update them with the latest info from Apollo’s database and third-party sources. If a contact’s email bounces or their LinkedIn shows a new job title, Apollo catches it and syncs the update. They even integrate email validation tools like ZeroBounce directly into Apollo now, so your email lists are validated and cleaned on the fly.
The term “living data” really hit home, your pipeline is only as strong as the data feeding it, and Apollo is ensuring that data is always accurate, verified, and up-to-date.
For Growth and our clients, this is validation of why we invest in data enrichment. It’s not glamorous, but having an always-current contact database gives every downstream tool (marketing automation, sales outreach, ABM ads) a better chance to hit the mark. ApolloNEXT’s data sessions showed that Apollo is doubling down on being the ultimate data partner for GTM teams.
Why We’re Excited: Apollo + HubSpot = Scalable Growth
As a longtime Apollo user and partner, I found ApolloNEXT reaffirming our strategy of integrating Apollo with HubSpot for scalable growth operations. Apollo’s new features complement our HubSpot CRM-centric approach perfectly. We use HubSpot as our single source of truth for customer data, and Apollo acts as the enrichment and outreach engine plugged into it. The bi-directional sync between Apollo and HubSpot means any new contact or update Apollo finds can flow right into HubSpot, and vice versa – ensuring both systems are always in lockstep. In fact, Apollo’s integration enables automatic enrichment of HubSpot records with 24+ data points (job titles, phone, industry, etc.), and it even supports custom field syncing. This seamless connectivity gives our team confidence that everyone is working off the same fresh data across platforms, eliminating silos or outdated info.
The ApolloNEXT announcements also strengthen Apollo’s position as our go-to solution for outbound sequencing and sales engagement. With Apollo’s AI writing better emails, dialing prospects efficiently, and feeding engagement data back into HubSpot, our outbound programs can scale while remaining personalized. This “super-stack” approach – HubSpot for CRM + Apollo for data & outreach – is something we advocate for our clients because it drives results. When Apollo’s AI finds a high-fit prospect and enriches their info, HubSpot can immediately trigger a workflow or an ABM campaign to nurture that lead. It’s a one-two punch for revenue teams: HubSpot manages the pipeline and customer journey, while Apollo constantly fills that pipeline with high-quality contacts and insights.
In short, ApolloNEXT reinforced why Growth is committed to our Apollo partnership. The new AI-powered upgrades are not just flashy demos; they’re practical enhancements that will help us and our clients engage prospects more effectively and scale smarter. Apollo remains our primary partner for everything from data enrichment to automated outbound plays – all syncing seamlessly into HubSpot, which remains our central source of truth for client data
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Final Thoughts: The Future of GTM is Here
Walking out of ApolloNEXT 2025, I felt energized about the future of sales and marketing. The event delivered on its promise to showcase how AI can elevate every aspect of go-to-market execution. The biggest “aha” for me was seeing an AI GTM platform actually working end-to-end – not as a collection of siloed tools, but as an orchestrated system that any growth team can leverage. As Tim Zheng said on stage, Apollo is aiming to make sophisticated GTM execution feel as easy as sending a text message, and that’s a vision we can get behind.
For those who couldn’t attend, Apollo has made much of the content available on-demand (and we’ll be sharing a link to the event recap video separately). I encourage GTM leaders, RevOps engineers, and marketers to check it out and consider how these AI innovations might fit into your strategy. At Growth, we’ll be digesting all that we learned and incorporating the best practices into our playbooks. One thing is certain: the companies that embrace AI-driven GTM tools like Apollo will have a competitive edge in turning prospects into customers faster.
ApolloNEXT was not just a conference, it was a glimpse into how we’ll all be working in the near future, with AI as an indispensable teammate in our sales and marketing efforts. We’re thrilled to be on this journey with Apollo as a partner, and we can’t wait to deploy these new capabilities to help our clients grow better. Here’s to smarter, faster revenue growth powered by AI and great partnerships!
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