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The death of SaaS has been greatly exaggerated

AI could make software cheaper to build, but trusted systems that hold data, enforce rules and survive regulatory scrutiny will only become more valuable.

Charlie Wood Charlie is CEO of Wiise. He previously worked in leadership roles at Salesforce, Microsoft and Dropbox.
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AI may flood the market with cheap software, but trusted systems of record will only grow in value, argues Charlie Wood. Shutterstock.

Every few years, the tech industry and its investors convince themselves an entire category is about to die. This year, it's software-as-a-service, or SaaS.

The rampant view goes that if AI can generate code, software becomes cheap and software companies lose value. Cue the sell-off, the doom loop and stories featuring analysts predicting the “end of software”.

It's a seductively simple theory, but it's both incomplete and indiscriminate. It fails to distinguish between software that looks useful and software that can be trusted to run something that actually matters.

AI is making software far easier to build, with small teams now able to produce tools in days that once took months. But this new abundance does not erase value, it changes where value sits.

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