"Software really does run everything these days. And many of its purveyors are among the most successful companies in the world. Recently, however, Wall Street has been spooked by the possibility of another sea change in the making: AI might be on the verge of eating software."
"The sudden leap forward in the capability of software-writing LLM tools such as Anthropic's Claude Code has investors worried that the corporate behemoths presently making tidy profits by selling subscription-based software-particularly for enterprise customers-might find themselves unable to compete with apps coded by AI for very little cost."
"This theoretical collapse of the software industry is known as 'The SaaSpocalypse.' It's reflected in the stock performance of such seemingly robust companies as Workday (down 35% year to date), Adobe (-26%), Salesforce (-25%), Autodesk (-21%), and Figma (-19%)."
Marc Andreessen's 2011 prediction that software would disrupt traditional industries largely materialized, with software companies becoming among the world's most successful. However, Wall Street now fears AI may disrupt the software industry itself. Advanced language models like Claude Code can write software at minimal cost, threatening subscription-based software providers' profitability. This potential disruption, termed "The SaaSpocalypse," has caused significant stock declines for major companies including Workday, Adobe, Salesforce, Autodesk, and Figma. The concern intensified when Anthropic demonstrated Claude's ability to modernize legacy COBOL code, triggering IBM's largest single-day stock drop.
Read at Fast Company
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