For years we repeated an idea that seemed indisputable: “software was eating the world.” It was the most direct way to explain why almost any sector ended up depending on an app, a platform or a cloud service. But something is beginning to change quietly and, at the same time, tremendously ambitious: the artificial intelligence revolution is not only transforming entire industries, it is also putting pressure on the software industry from within. The question that begins to arise is delicate and fascinating at the same time: if AI can build custom tools in a matter of moments, what is the point of continuing to pay for rigid and standardized software that works, yes, but that often forces it to work as the platform dictates.
This is the point at which the debate becomes really serious: it is not about incremental improvement, but about questioning the current model as the standard for enterprise software. The logic is aggressive, at least on paper. So we could be looking at a potentially massive change. And yes, “potentially” is the key word: there are reasons to think that this can happen, and equally strong reasons to believe that it can happen with very real limits.
Software in times of artificial intelligence
This may all revolve around a very earthly question: what are you paying for when you pay for software. Until now, the Price included the construction of the tool, its evolution, and the cost of making it generic enough to sell to thousands of companies. If the AI compresses that part and allows generate code fast and cheapthe value migrates to other places: flow design, real integration with business systems, measurable results. Bret Taylor, founder and CEO of Sierra and part of the OpenAI board, insists that the focus should be on the value the customer receives, not on technology for technology’s sake.
Until now, for most companies, the map was quite recognizable: either you bought a pre-packaged tool and assumed its rules, or you commissioned a custom development, usually slower and more expensive, but more tailored to what you needed. What AI introduces is an alternative that, on paper, breaks the balance: instead of choosing a piece of software, it would be enough to explain the problem and let an agent build a custom system, deploy it and adjust it as processes change. Bret Taylor describes it from Sierra’s experience with customer service agents: “Our hypothesis is that, if we move forward five years, the vast majority of digital interactions will be through an agent.” If that is true, the dominant interface of many companies would no longer be a traditional platform.
Most importantly, this conversation no longer happens only at conferences or investor presentations. There are practical signs that the paradigm is, at the very least, emerging: the so-called “vibe coding” has become a reality for many users who are not developers, capable of setting up a website or tools describing what they want with text. Platforms like the European Lovable have pushed that idea to the general public: fewer technical barriersmore rapid iteration, less “project” and more trial and error. This does not mean that a company is going to replace its ERP tomorrow with a system generated on the fly, but it does help to understand why the market and the industry are beginning to take the possibility seriously.
And this is where enthusiasm often clashes with real enterprise. Corporate software does not live in isolation: it is attached to databases, legacy systems, identities, permissions, audits and integrations that have been working in a specific way for years. Added to this is the most delicate aspect: regulatory compliance, security and internal responsibilities, which in regulated sectors dictate what can be done and what cannot be done. Even if an agent can generate a functional system, it remains to be resolved who maintains it, who supports it, who ensures that it does not break over time, and who responds when something fails. In this area, “customized and fast” software still has many questions ahead.
If all this still seems too abstract, Bloomberg provides a fairly clear thermometer: the market is already reacting as if the threat were real, although we still do not know how far it will go. The media explains that the launch of Claude Cowork by Anthropic reactivated the fear of a disruption that puts pressure on traditional software. According to that text, a set of SaaS values followed by Morgan Stanley as an indicator of the sector has fallen 15% so far in 2026 after falling 11% in 2025, the worst start since 2022. In addition to all this, some cited analysts suggest that right now there are no reasons to have shares of software companies in portfolio.
Images | Hack Capital | Anthropic
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