Block's problems trace to CEO Jack Dorsey, who should not be running the business. Per CoinDesk, Dorsey says the 4,000 job cuts were a permanent restructuring to replace middle management with AI, not cost reduction. That looks like AI-washing, and if Block really had anywhere near 4,000 middle managers among about 10,000 full-time staff at end-2025, it is a huge red flag. Dorsey is to blame for the over-hiring, the layoffs and the mess, and remains destructive to shareholder value. x.com  x.com 

Meta's Muse could be AI's next ChatGPT moment, showing agents doing tasks for consumers with visible ROI. Mass agent adoption would raise token and compute use across inference, CPUs, memory, networking, optics and data centers, the trade behind AMD, Arm, Micron, Marvell, Coherent, Lumentum, AAOI, IREN, Cipher, Nebius and CoreWeave. Expedia, Shopify and Instacart could be rerated as agents become transaction gateways, lifting conversion and unlocking demand held back by booking friction. x.com  … Show more

Block could benefit from lower funding costs if its credit rating is upgraded. Bloomberg Intelligence ranks its bonds first by market value among high-BB upgrade candidates; unlike businesses facing rising capital costs, an upgrade would move Block in the opposite direction. x.com 

FactSet risks having its app usage automated from outside and becoming unmonetizable as AI agents operate it directly. Its MCP integration was a huge advance and a growth driver, worth perhaps a 20% subscription uplift, but OpenAI's computer use worked well on a regular desktop session, if much slower, and simply noted the FactSet subscription to use when needed. SaaS bear points from earlier this year are materializing quickly. x.com  x.com 

Shopify's moat may not last if AI can build and run a store end to end without a platform taking 3% of GMV. CEO Tobi Lütke says over 50% of its code is now AI-generated; if that reaches 80% and then 95%, merchants and new AI-native startups can use the same models directly. The $101B GMV, 34% revenue growth and 15% FCF margin are real, so the 16% drop after a beat prices the moat's duration, not the quarter. The bypass need not be sudden, only a growing share of new commerce spend. x.com 

Companies without true innovators at the top will be crushed in the AI era, which favors innovator-led companies like Block, Zoom, Zillow, Airbnb, Clear Secure and Okta. @nachunja notes Jack Dorsey pushed Block toward open-source models in 2023, having lived through Square's early dependence on Visa, so Block won't casually accept concentrated token-supplier risk from Anthropic or OpenAI. x.com 

Shopify faces a lot of risk in the AI revolution, which limits its upside at a $185 billion market cap and its current multiple. It has executed very well, and management may stay ahead so its infrastructure capitalizes on the agentic wave instead of being overrun, but that is not guaranteed. Against other plays and an already heavy software allocation, it is a candidate to offload, possibly after another chance at its all-time high. x.com 

Software looks like a group that can lead the market higher, with many names from Palantir and ServiceNow to Zeta and MongoDB moving from late Stage 4 or Stage 1 into early Stage 2 uptrends. Sentiment is at an all-time low on fears that AI agents and chatbots will replace SaaS. AI will disrupt some areas, but many software businesses are using it to grow revenue, ship faster and expand operating leverage, and will thrive. The charts will separate survivors from the dead. x.com  x.com 

Block is a midline bottom-fishing opportunity as it shifts from a payment tool to an AI-powered financial ecosystem. After more than four years of basing, the stock decisively broke above its 200-week moving average, and a breakout from the range could send it sharply higher. Strong 2026 guidance, consensus Buy ratings and expanding margins support it, with the current $65 area offering a margin of safety ahead of May 7 earnings. x.com 

Software companies face a multi-year repricing because AI has removed the scarcity that made software valuable. For 20 years building software required engineers, letting SaaS firms charge monthly fees forever; when anyone can build a working product in a weekend with Claude, software stops being the moat. Atlassian is down 75%, HubSpot 69% and Figma 86%, and layoffs show headcount no longer scales with output. Survivors will be those with distribution, data and trust underneath. x.com