Op-Ed: SaaS is not finished. You're simply being marketed the obituary.
The narrative that "AI has killed software" has a small group of vocal supporters but plenty of subtle evidence to the contrary. The companies that will thrive in the next five years are those that do not view the hyperscalers as new deities.
I prefer to research before making any assertions to avoid sounding like a typical LinkedIn post. I wish more people in this industry would follow the same approach, as there's a prevailing assumption that large figures tell the whole story.
When the Black Death swept through, many likely believed it was the end. Similarly, during times of war, people thought it marked the conclusion of society. However, we have an innate ability to overcome challenges and leverage change to our benefit.
As AI began to permeate our professional and personal lives, numerous individuals proclaimed that "AI will replace people," suggesting that this technology, not particularly groundbreaking, would dominate our thoughts, emotions, and labor, steering us wherever it desired.
Yet, we continue to work; individuals are still engaged in writing, thinking, creating, and building.
In recent years, there has been a growing chorus claiming that "SaaS is dead." This phrase often originates from influential voices capable of shaping public opinion, prompting many to don black attire for the anticipated funeral.
In August 2024, Klarna's CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, mentioned in an earnings call that the Swedish fintech had "shut down Salesforce," with Workday following suit. Klarna intended to create its own AI-driven alternatives that would be lean and free from the complications of traditional enterprise software. This statement moved markets, spawning articles with headlines proclaiming the demise of SaaS. Marc Benioff from Salesforce, when asked at Dreamforce about a customer seemingly favoring AI over his product, admitted to feeling embarrassed.
About six months later, Siemiatkowski quietly clarified that Klarna had not replaced Salesforce with AI technologies. Instead, they used other SaaS solutions: Deel for HR, third-party tools for CRM, and the graph database Neo4j for data consolidation. Klarna still employs Slack, which remains a Salesforce product, and Siemiatkowski openly expressed on X how "tremendously embarrassed" he felt by the way the narrative had escalated. He stated, "No, we did not replace SaaS with an LLM."
This illustrates one of the most revealing stories in enterprise software over the past two years. The gap between words and actions highlights the mechanics behind the "SaaS is dead" narrative. The headline gained traction, but the correction did not.
A sector of analysts, venture capitalists, and foundation model executives capitalized on the louder side of the narrative for an entire year.
It is essential to consider who benefits from the idea that software-as-a-service is being supplanted by artificial intelligence since the answer is quite limited. The hyperscalers benefit because AI workloads substantiate the $660 to $690 billion in capital expenditures that the five largest US cloud and technology firms have committed for 2026, nearly double that of the previous year, as per Futurum Group analysis.
The foundation model labs profit because redirecting enterprise software expenditure to their APIs substantiates valuations that are otherwise hard to justify. By the end of 2025, OpenAI reported around $20 billion in annual recurring revenue, while Anthropic surpassed $9 billion in January 2026. These figures are indeed substantial, yet they correspond to roughly three percent and just over one percent of the hyperscaler capex allocated to serve them.
Venture capitalists gain as their portfolio valuations hinge on the narrative that AI-native companies will surpass the incumbents they once supported. Nvidia, as both a supplier and financier of this boom, benefits until circumstances change.
In March 2026, CEO Jensen Huang revealed that his recent investments in OpenAI and Anthropic would likely be the final ones. The cycle of financing—Nvidia invests in OpenAI, and OpenAI purchases Nvidia chips—reached a stage where even the chipmaker was ready to abandon the notion of it being a virtuous cycle.
As MIT's Michael Cusumano pointed out to Bloomberg starkly: "Nvidia is investing $100 billion in OpenAI stock, and OpenAI is stating they are going to buy $100 billion or more of Nvidia chips."
You could interpret that as demand, but it can also be seen as bookkeeping.
The critical question is whether any of this translates into tangible business results. Here, the data paints a less favorable picture than the optimistic projections.
In July 2025, MIT’s Project NANDA released “The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025,” based on 150 executive interviews, 350 survey responses, and examination of 300 public AI deployments. Its key finding was that despite approximately $30 to $40 billion in enterprise generative AI spending, 95% of
Op-Ed: SaaS is not finished. You're simply being marketed the obituary.
The idea that "SaaS is dead" serves the interests of hyperscalers and venture capitalists. However, the evidence indicates that software is evolving rather than disappearing, and the successful players will remain stable.