Monday.com CEO: Is SaaS Dead?

Monday.com is backing its CEO's words with action, having already processed over 17 million AI-driven tasks on its platform. The company has deliberately shifted its own AI features to a consumption-based pricing model rather than a per-seat charge, anticipating that as AI drives efficiency, charging per user becomes an obsolete metric. This reflects a broader crisis facing the SaaS industry as it pivots from headcount-based licensing to outcome-based pricing. As AI agents allow one person to do the work of five, the risk of revenue cannibalization is significant; some contact centers have already seen seat reductions of 20% in a single year due to AI integration. This forces software vendors to prove value beyond just user access. The go-to-market landscape is being similarly reshaped by AI tooling. Gartner predicts that by 2028, Generative AI will execute 60% of a seller's tasks. High-growth "AI-Native" companies are already seeing significantly higher sales funnel conversion rates, leveraging AI for everything from lead generation to automated content creation. This software intelligence layer is driving a parallel arms race in hardware. Hyperscalers like Google (TPU), AWS (Trainium), and Microsoft are all developing custom silicon and ASICs, moving away from general-purpose chips. The goal is to optimize performance-per-watt for their specific AI workloads, though the cost to design a single 5nm chip can exceed $500 million. The immense capital cost and time-to-market for custom silicon has created a new market of specialized "neo-cloud" providers like CoreWeave. These players focus exclusively on providing bare-metal GPU capacity at scale, and hyperscalers are now leasing this infrastructure in multi-billion dollar deals to bridge their own capacity gaps and meet immediate customer demand for AI training and inference. This shift is forcing a strategic re-evaluation for deep-tech founders and GTM leaders. Companies are now navigating a complex build-vs-buy decision for both their AI software stack and the underlying compute infrastructure. Success no longer hinges on the application itself, but on owning the intelligent orchestration layer, with companies like ServiceNow and UiPath now positioning themselves as platforms to manage and govern entire ecosystems of third-party AI agents.