Martech is in an unprecedented state of flux. Tools, AI adoption and stack architecture are all changing, reorganizing, not with chaos, but with design. If you’re not keeping up, you’re already behind. Here are the need-to-know insights about the changes.
15,384 martech tools
In 2025, the marketing technology landscape is balancing boom and bust. The 2025 martech story is not one of chaos or calm, but of convergence. Boom, bust and balance are not competing narratives — they’re coexisting realities. Martech is evolving in the market and in your stack.
The 2025 Martech Landscape signals a deceptively calm return to “normal” — a steady 9% growth — but beneath that is a market undergoing seismic shifts. It’s not a single story, but three unfolding at once.
There are 2,489 new tools from more than 11,000 candidates, continuing the expansion that followed the genAI shockwave of 2024. Content AI categories like video and content marketing are thriving, with additions far outpacing removals — signaling real demand, not just hype.
At the same time, many martech tools went bust. The 1,211 tools removed are the most in three years. For the most part, they were long-standing tools that ran out of runway. More than 84% simply shut down; most were founded before 2020 and beloved by users (52% had G2 scores above 4.5). Quality alone couldn’t save them from financial realities or market irrelevance.
And yet, there is also “balance.” Amid the extremes, one category quietly surged: Product Management. Without flashy growth or mass exits, it nearly doubled its stack presence (23% to 42%) and improved its G2 rating by 3.2% — the highest increase across of all the tools we measured. Tools like Jira and Aha! underpin a new norm: brands building martech in-house with low-code platforms.
Product Management is the backbone of a growing shift where brands don’t just buy martech — they build it. Fueled by low-code platforms and in-house experimentation, companies are assembling bespoke internal tools.
Dig deeper: 10 insights for marketing and MOps leaders from the State of Martech 2025 report
AI adoption
AI is rapidly redefining and replacing the stack architecture. The evolution follows a five-stage curve, reflecting distinct levels of AI integration and sophistication.
The Martech Stack AI Adoption Curve below shows how AI went from a helpful assistant to an integrated operator. Each iteration builds on the last, toward a future where AI is not an add-on, but the architecture itself.
| Start | Example | AI Innovation | Description | Adoption |
| 2025 | Claude 3, Cursor | MCPs | “Works with others” | ? |
| 2024 | LangChain, AutoGPT | AI Agents | “Acts independently” | 44.8% |
| Mid 2023 | n8n, Make, Relay.app | AI Workflows | “Automates tasks” | 69.8% |
| Feb 2023 | Microsoft Copilot | Co-Pilots | “Guides on site” | 54.2% |
| Nov 2022 | ChatGPT | AI Assistants | “Talks like humans” | 87.5% |
Curve 1 – AI Assistants (87.5% adoption)
Tools like ChatGPT dominate as external aids for ideation, writing and summarization. They’re powerful yet peripheral — democratizing AI across teams but living outside core martech systems.
Curve 2 – Co-Pilots (54.2%)
AI shifts inward. Embedded directly in CRMs and analytics platforms, Co-Pilots offer suggestions within tools marketers already use, signaling the early stages of inside-out AI integration.
Curve 3 – AI Workflows (69.8%)
Automation kicks in. AI now orchestrates complex, multi-step processes across platforms using tools like Zapier and n8n. AI goes from a productivity layer into a process engine.
Curve 4 – AI Agents (44.8%)
This is the boldest leap. Agents act with autonomy, optimizing campaigns or routing leads in real time. Adoption is lower due to complexity and risk, but this marks the emergence of AI as an operational layer within the stack.
Curve 5 – Model Context Protocols (MCPs)
Still nascent, MCPs enable persistent memory and coordination between tools and agents. They promise a future where AI not only acts but remembers, collaborates and evolves with context.
Dig deeper: Should creative operations report to creative or MOps?
Two major shifts in martech composability
Martech stack design is undergoing two significant composability shifts — one in B2B and another in B2C/B2B2C — each redefining what sits at the center of MOps.
We previously found that martech stacks operate like solar systems: Center platforms anchor the stack, with orchestration and activation tools orbiting them.
In 2025, that center is shifting. Whether CRM, marketing automation platforms (MAPs) or cloud data warehouses (CDWs), marketers are reorganizing their systems for agility, integration and long-term adaptability. Composability is now the gravitational principle of Martech Stack Architectures. It lets brands group and align stacks around the customer experiences to drive profits.
Shift 1: B2B stacks become more composable
CRM remains the gravitational core, growing slightly to 42% as the central platform. While CRM holds firm, MAPs are receding, falling from 30.7% to 26%. Most notably, custom-built or “other” platforms jumped from 2% to 10%, signaling a surge in modular, composable architectures tailored to business needs. These setups often retain CRM at the center while wrapping it with bespoke orchestration layers that integrate automation, content and data workflows.
Shift 2: B2C and B2B2C stacks rebalance their center
Customer data platforms (CDPs) lost their lead, dropping from 26.9% to 17.4%. MAPs surged to 26.1% and CDWs rose to 23.9%. We are moving away from monolithic CDPs toward composable ones, moving to cloud-native tools like Fivetran, DBT and Hightouch. MAPs are evolving into orchestration engines, while CDWs become the AI-ready data foundation, often owned by IT but accessed by marketing.
Dig deeper: 8 challenges for marketing teams navigating the MAP market
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