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The SaaSpocalypse debate raged this week. Software stocks swung wildly. AI models are eating software value.
Airtable sold for pennies on the dollar. The one-time highflyer went for under $1.3 billion. It was valued at nearly $12 billion in 2021.
Grindr posts 33% Q2 revenue growth to $138 million. CEO credits AI strategy for productivity gains and stronger subscriber retention.
Read MoreNASA engineer Eryn Andrews built a six-figure voiceover side hustle. She earns over $227,000 in 2026 while maintaining her full-time space agency role.
Read MoreHubSpot and Datadog plunged on earnings. Both stocks sank 19% on Thursday. Datadog's biggest AI client cut usage.
The iShares software ETF fell 24% in Q1. That was its worst since 2008. It rebounded and is now down just 3%.
AI Threat and Software Economics
"I do think that companies are going to continue to use these coding agents to build functionality to maybe act as a little bit of pressure on renewals," said RBC analyst Matt Hedberg. Sentiment was extremely negative. Clients did not want to discuss software.
Salesforce lost over 40% since late 2024. CEO Marc Benioff tried to calm investors. His software won't be coded away.
Tools like Codex and Claude Code threaten software economics. They slowly hollow out company value. Growth rates matter less than this threat.
Private SaaS IPOs disappeared this year. AI companies got 86% of deal value. The pre-AI valuation model is broken.
Atlassian and Twilio Surge
Atlassian jumped 35% on Friday. That was its best day since its 2015 IPO. The company reported its most profitable quarter since 2021.
CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes credited R&D teams. They gave customers quality at the best price. Atlassian slashed 1,600 jobs five months ago.
Twilio and Cloudflare also gained. Twilio popped over 20%. Cloudflare rose 5.6%.
Box CEO Aaron Levie praised Atlassian on X. "There was a misplaced thesis over the past 6 months that somehow agents would be bad for certain software categories," he wrote. He noted nuance is often missing in sell-it-all trades.
RBC's Rishi Jaluria cited short covering. Investors bet against Atlassian. Now they are buying back shares.
"Any proof point that says, oh wait, this company isn't dead, is going to result in a short squeeze," Jaluria said. The stock is still down 8% this year. It lost one-third of its value in 2025.
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