The SaaS debt trap
Wall Street spent the week arguing about whether AI is slowing down. The other bubble is what the SaaS incumbents did when their multiples collapsed.
The SaaS debt trap is the most significant threat to the legacy software category, surpassing the AI slowdown concerns that dominated headlines. SaaS incumbents, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Workday, ServiceNow, and Adobe, have taken on substantial debt, repurchased their stock, and marketed it as an AI strategy. This approach was effective initially but has now resulted in a debt-driven death loop.
The market's current valuation of leading AI companies, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, is comparable to the entire SaaS public category, indicating that AI-native companies are outpacing traditional SaaS businesses.
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