We tested 1,500 queries across 5 AI engines, 18 CRM platforms, and 2 languages (EN/ES) to discover which brands dominate AI recommendations — and which ones are invisible.
Salesforce and HubSpot together account for 56% of all brand mentions. Every single engine picks the same top 3: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM. The CRM conversation is a two-horse race with a distant third.
Not only does Salesforce lead every engine, it exceeds the theoretical maximum with a score of 100 (1,568 mentions across 1,500 queries — meaning it's often mentioned multiple times per response). HubSpot is a strong #2, but at 85 it still trails significantly. Together these two platforms own more than half of all CRM brand mentions in AI.
Each brand's AI Visibility Score (0–100) measures how often it appears across 1,500 queries. The gap between digital-native brands and legacy names tells a clear story about what AI values.
Visibility Score = % of queries where the brand was mentioned by AI engines. Higher is better.
Niche US-centric CRMs collapse in Spanish, while international players with LATAM presence gain significant ground. The language you ask in changes which CRM gets recommended.
Niche US-centric CRMs (Close, Insightly, Copper) lose 66–80% of their visibility in Spanish, while international players (Pipedrive, Dynamics 365, ActiveCampaign) gain ground. This suggests AI engines draw from different source material per language — Spanish-language content favors platforms with strong LATAM distribution and localized marketing.
The most unanimous category we've ever studied. All 5 engines rank the same top 3 (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM). Yet each engine has a distinct recommendation style — Gemini writes the longest responses of ANY AIVO study at 6,145 avg characters.
Oracle and SAP — two of the biggest enterprise software companies on Earth — are nearly invisible in AI CRM recommendations. Their combined mentions are less than Pipedrive alone.
Oracle (127) + SAP (156) = 283 combined mentions — barely half of Pipedrive (537), a mid-market sales CRM. Despite massive enterprise market share, legacy vendors are nearly invisible when users ask AI engines for CRM recommendations. AI engines favor modern, content-rich platforms with strong SEO and community presence over enterprise incumbents.
Before running the study, we set five hypotheses about CRM AI visibility. Here's how they held up against 1,500 data points.
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