State of the Stack 2025: Homegrown martech surges as AI accelerates development

Thanks to AI, marketers are using more tools than ever, and more are homegrown, according to the 2025 State of Your Stack Survey, a collaboration between MarTech, Chiefmartec.com and MarketingOps.com.  

The survey found that 62.1% of respondents use more tools than two years ago. 

“It’s surprising to see now how many folks we have saying, ‘Yes,’ even given that environment of fiscal discipline around martech stacks. Yes, their stacks are expanding. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to lay the credit or the blame for that on AI,” said Scott Brinker, editor at chiefmartec.com and VP of platform ecosystems at HubSpot. 

Brinker and MarTech Editorial Director Mike Pastore unveiled the survey today at the first session of The MarTech Conference 2025.

They acknowledged how ever-present and overwhelming AI is in marketing technology. 

“How many of you are just sick of the word AI at this point?” Brinker asked. “There’s just so much AI noise. The thing that makes this both exciting and challenging for folks is … it’s not just smoke … there’s a lot of fire.”

Dig deeper: A practical guide to building a marketing technology stack

Generative AI tools are now used by 68.6% of organizations, making them the 6th most popular martech tool. This rapid adoption is unprecedented. “To have generative AI be right up there in the top seven in two, two and a half years, that’s pretty remarkable,” said Brinker.

Marketers are doing it for themselves

One of the survey’s most surprising findings is the resurgence of homegrown martech solutions, with nearly a quarter of respondents planning to add them in the next 12 to 24 months. This is a significant shift in just a few months.

“When The 2024 MarTech Replacement Survey was done less than six months ago,” said Pastore, “almost no one [2%] was saying they were replacing their apps with homegrown apps.”

In The State of the Stack Survey, “commercial software still has a pretty big advantage, close to 60%,” said Pastore, “but homegrown solutions, near 25%, that’s a big, big change.”

Brinker said the reason is the “new generation AI tools” that accelerate development speed and enable non-professional developers to create simple applications. 

Content is the AI king

AI-powered content generation is currently the most popular application, especially among small businesses. Looking ahead, marketers plan to further integrate AI for data analysis and insights, personalization, and automated marketing tasks. 

While the use of AI for automated workflows isn’t currently a top priority, Brinker said all the talk about  “AI agents that can take on more work for you” suggests “this seems to be the theme moving forward in 2025: How do we find a place where we actually do trust these AI agents?”

Dig deeper: The smart way to handle overlaps in your martech stack

Interestingly, 46% of respondents indicated they were working with or planning to use AI for decisioning.

Despite the enthusiasm for AI and expanding martech capabilities, familiar challenges persist. Data integration remains the biggest hurdle in managing martech stacks, cited by 65.7% of respondents.

Can you trust your data?

“Without data, a lot of your AI applications just aren’t going to work very well,” said Pastonre. “Or if you feed them bad data, they’re going to feed you bad responses, make bad decisions, bad workflows.”

Where there is data, there are silos, which are the top concern for marketers regarding their martech stacks. 

Brinker highlighted the potential of cloud data warehouses and “composable” architectures to address this issue, suggesting that “this idea of a universal data layer” could alleviate the problem of siloed data.

Dig deeper: The hidden costs of martech sprawl and how to overcome them

Budget constraints remain the top barrier to adopting new martech tools, particularly for smaller organizations. 

While data integration poses a management challenge, “integrating tools ranked fairly low” as a barrier to adoption, perhaps because, as Pastore suggested, marketers “weed out the ones that aren’t going to integrate with what you have early on in the selection process.”

The complexity of implementation also presents a barrier, especially for larger enterprises with more intricate stacks.

Goals and satisfaction

The primary goal driving martech investments is revenue growth. It was cited by nearly 30% of respondents, followed closely by increasing marketing efficiency. Customer experience is also a consideration, particularly for larger organizations.

Overall, marketers are relatively content with their martech stacks, with 56.8% reporting they are either satisfied or very satisfied.

Mid-sized companies showed the highest satisfaction rates, while smaller companies reported the most dissatisfaction, likely due to resource limitations. 

“At the end of the day, it’s not about the stack. It’s entirely about what we’re doing with it,” said Brinker.

Dig deeper: Martech stack complexity fragments audience data