Daniel
Self-Directed Investor, YouTube Investing Creator
The SaaSpocalypse narrative makes less and less sense for Salesforce, ServiceNow and Palantir, because enterprises will deploy AI agents that use software tools rather than build their own software. Jensen Huang says agents won't replace tools but will use them, and NVIDIA has deployed so many agents that its tool usage is actually increasing. x.comÂ
Salesforce, ServiceNow and Palantir are among the best opportunities in the market after falling 60%, 60% and 40% on fears that LLMs let every company build its own software. That is technically possible but economically irrational, since building, maintaining, securing and updating custom software at scale costs far more than investors realize. These companies are becoming more valuable as enablers of AI, not its victims, as their free cash flow shows. x.comÂ
These software names get stronger as AI grows, despite the early-2026 "AI will kill SaaS" sell-off. ServiceNow is becoming the control room that manages companies' AI agents. Salesforce's Agentforce brings in $1.2B a year and is tripling; Atlassian clients using Rovo spend twice as much; Adobe's business-safe Firefly earns $250M; Workday's agents bring nearly $500M. SAP and Snowflake hold the data AI needs, and Datadog monitors the extra systems AI creates, with the AI wave still early. x.com … Show more
AI will not replace Fortune 500 CRM platforms, as the moat of Salesforce, ServiceNow and HubSpot goes beyond the software. It lies in the data model, integrations, workflows and customer records; agents may even raise the value of a trusted system of record. Thin workflow tools are vulnerable and seat pricing faces pressure. Platforms that make AI a native operating layer to expand usage and monetization should be pretty good investments; they look near the end of a multi-year correction. x.comÂ
Salesforce might be dead as intelligence becomes an abundant commodity, though it can argue it has distribution. Claude, OpenAI and open-weight models such as Kimi, Qwen and DeepSeek are in a price fight to zero, so years of developer work no longer form a moat. The new moats are trust, distribution and data, especially data behind corporate firewalls, in hospitals or otherwise hard to get. x.comÂ
Microsoft, ServiceNow and Salesforce could capture the next AI wave because it will be software, not chips. Nvidia's CEO said there will be 100x more agents using enterprise tools, making software vendors the real bottleneck. After 2025's winners Nebius, SanDisk and CoreWeave, the next trillion dollars may go to companies charging AI agents monthly subscriptions. x.comÂ
Enterprise demand for sovereign AI favors Palantir's transformation model. In a two-pronged AI economy, businesses can retain their IP and use low-cost open models while frontier labs compete for the last increment of intelligence. x.comÂ
AI is going to kill Salesforce, Adobe and Netflix, whether the AI is American or not. Beyond the narrative, the question is their underlying growth prospects, and one firsthand workplace already uses only homegrown AI tools and essentially no SaaS products. x.com x.comÂ
SaaS is alive: AI is not replacing entrenched enterprise platforms such as Palantir, Microsoft, ServiceNow, Shopify, Datadog, Salesforce, Snowflake, AppLovin, MongoDB and Zeta. Switching costs and risks are too high, and no credible CTO will swap ServiceNow for a stitched-together AI replacement. Using AI themselves should expand margins by cutting headcount bloat and lifting revenue through AI features. ServiceNow has 600+ customers with ACV over $5M, up 22%, and rose 23% in a week. x.comÂ
ServiceNow is proving that AI is a tailwind rather than a threat to its business. It launched Flow, an AI IT service-desk agent companies can deploy without building their own agents in house. The market had assumed companies would build such agents themselves and replace ServiceNow; it may turn out to be the exact opposite. x.comÂ
Palantir looks exposed as AI deployment gets cheaper and more crowded, because outside government contracts it lacks domain expertise and controls no meaningful infrastructure software, relying on others such as Databricks. Amazon and Microsoft are launching forward-deployed engineering and frontier AI groups backed by deep enterprise relationships, and open-source models gaining traction should bring costs down. IT services firms such as Infosys could do really well instead. x.com x.comÂ
Software stocks probably have a floor as results challenge fears that AI agents will displace them. Since the June 22 momentum unwind, IGV is up 25% and the SOX index down 22%. Atlassian and Salesforce jumped on solid results, plus an Anthropic deal for Salesforce, and possible Silver Lake interest lifted Workday. A new bullish twist says agents will use software tools 10-100x more than humans. Whether fundamentals back the rally is still open; a likely Fed hike and weak September are risks. … Show more
