Last week, software-as-a-service (SaaS) stocks declined following Anthropic’s preview of its new Cowork feature, which enhances its AI coding assistant, Claude, for broader tasks like file management and web searching. This innovation has raised concerns about AI’s potential disruption of the software industry, echoing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s 2024 assertion that “SaaS is dead.” Predictions from IDC in late 2025 indicated that traditional SaaS pricing models may become obsolete by 2028, necessitating changes for 70% of software providers. Cowork signifies a significant advancement towards AI agents directly interacting with applications and data, potentially reshaping the software landscape.
