SaaS CEO: AI Agents Will Expand, Not Kill, Software
Monday.com's CEO Eran Zinman argued that AI agents won't make platforms like his obsolete, but will instead expand the market 100x. He believes that while AI will generate interfaces and automate tasks, enterprises will still rely on dedicated vendors for long-term software maintenance, positioning platforms as foundational infrastructure for the coming "agentic" economy.
The optimistic view of an expanding market contrasts sharply with a recent software stock wipeout in February 2026, which saw an estimated $2 trillion in market value erased as investors feared AI agents would replace, not enhance, existing software. This "SaaSpocalypse" theory posits that agents will become the primary interface for tasks, making the underlying software from vendors like Atlassian and Salesforce mere commodities. The core threat targets the foundational SaaS business model. When an AI agent can manage a sales pipeline or assign a project ticket directly from a conversation, the need for individual human user licenses—the "per-seat" model—diminishes, directly challenging established revenue streams. This has led consulting firms like Bain & Company to advise SaaS leaders to shift pricing toward outcome-based models to survive. In response, monday.com is moving aggressively into what it calls a "Digital Workforce." The company has already seen a 10x increase in the use of its AI features and is rolling out a pay-per-use credit system for them, separating AI functions from standard subscriptions. An AI assistant named "Monday Expert" is also planned for release. This industry-wide pivot reflects a race to own the new layer of intelligence. Forrester predicts that by 2026, 30% of enterprise application vendors will adopt open standards like the Model Context Protocol (MCP), creating ecosystems where AI agents can collaborate across different platforms, preventing vendor lock-in. While monday.com's AI strategy triggered a 30% stock surge in early 2025, the reality is more complex. By early 2026, the stock had fallen 77% from its highs as the company's enterprise growth, fueled by AI, was offset by a persistent slowdown in its self-serve channel for smaller businesses. Gartner forecasts that by 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants. The focus is shifting from simply writing code to using AI for quality control and managing the entire software development lifecycle, with predictions of 25-30% productivity gains for teams that fully integrate a suite of AI tools.
