Artificial intelligence has been reshaping software for more than a year. This week, the market blinked.
A sell-off in global software stocks followed the release of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, sending a basket of software as a service (SaaS) stocks tracked by Morgan Stanley to their worst start to a year since 2022, even as broader equity markets remain near record highs.
The source of the anxiety is that agentic AI tools capable of reliably doing complex work may threaten the economics that made SaaS one of the most reliable growth sectors of the past decade.
For Australian venture capital firms — among the world’s strongest backers of SaaS and major beneficiaries of its long run — the question is unavoidable: is their cash cow under threat?
