Skip to content

2026 Predictions Landing Page Hero Image_SaaS
Will AI be the Death of SaaS?

Out of all the questions that have emerged about AI, the most prominent to TBR has been: “Will AI be the death of SaaS?” Today, SaaS is far from dead, but it has reached an unmistakable inflection point. The model that reshaped enterprise software over the last 20 years has reached maturity just as a new layer of intelligence is forming above it. The result is a market that still depends on SaaS but no longer treats it as the strategic center of gravity. What once looked like a stable, compounding growth engine now looks more like baseline infrastructure supporting a different kind of workflow. As a result of this shift, the market is wondering whether SaaS applications will continue to define enterprise workflows or whether that role is shifting to AI-native platforms and agentic systems. 

2026 Predictions Request Button

 

2026 Predictions: Cloud & Software

Enterprise customers are focused on modernizing their SaaS estate, not adding new applications. Market saturation, technical debt and an impetus to become AI-ready are pushing IT buyers to prioritize modern platforms.

AI-driven disruption remains plausible, but progress over the next year will not be decisive enough to downgrade SaaS as a core layer of the enterprise stack. Model quality, autonomy, and enterprise readiness will improve, yet most workflows will still rely on structured systems of record, permissioning models and compliance guardrails anchored in SaaS platforms. 

SaaS incumbents will establish broad agentic suites powered by proprietary small language models (SLMs), adding new use cases via internal and partner development, and slowly begin to monetize these platforms to the benefit of total revenue growth.