{"id":49855,"date":"2026-05-01T14:51:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/did-saas-just-survive-the-ai-scare\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T14:51:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T14:51:45","slug":"did-saas-just-survive-the-ai-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/did-saas-just-survive-the-ai-scare\/","title":{"rendered":"Did SaaS just survive the AI scare?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f48b743022d9b19bbff712?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes\"\/><figcaption>Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes.<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 shares soar as AI boosts their earnings.<\/li>\n<li>All three companies have previously been cited as victims of the so-called SaaSpocalypse.<\/li>\n<li>SaaS stocks have taken a hammering this year over fears AI will make some software obsolete.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Reports of the death of SaaS may have been greatly exaggerated.<\/p>\n<p>Shares of software-as-a-service companies Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 soared on Friday morning after reporting earnings beats on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Each of the companies cited AI as a reason for accelerating revenue \u2014 the very same technology that has pummelled their share prices this year over fears that companies could use AI to build the software they sell.<\/p>\n<p>Atlassian&#039;s share price was up as much as 25% in premarket trading on Friday morning, Twilio rose as much as 20%, and Five9 gained 16% and continued to rise at market open. Atlassian and Twilio pared some of those gains an hour after market open, while Five9 was up more than 20%.<\/p>\n<p>Revenue at Atlassian, which provides project collaboration software, was up 32% year over year. Twilio, which provides cloud-based communications tools, reported revenues up 20% compared to last year, while contact center company Five9 saw revenues grow by 9%.<\/p>\n<p>While the results were strong, it doesn&#039;t mean the so-called SaaSpocalypse is over, Kate Leaman, chief market analyst at AvaTrade, told Business Insider.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Last night&#039;s results from Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 won&#039;t kill the SaaSpocalypse narrative entirely, but they do put a significant dent in it,&quot; Leaman said.<\/p>\n<p>The company&#039;s results and soaring share prices are &quot;not the behavior of a sector in structural decline,&quot; she added.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/1DJef\/full.png\" alt=\"Line chart\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Twilio CEO Khozema Shipchandler told Business Insider&#039;s Rosalie Chan that he sees AI as a catalyst for business because Twilio is more of an infrastructure company, and that people can&#039;t vibe code much of what it does.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s similar messaging from the leaders of other software companies whose share prices have been battered by SaaSpocalypse fears.<\/p>\n<p>Dan Rogers, the CEO of work management company Asana, previously told Business Insider that its software can help businesses manage AI agents, driving up demand for its software. Asana&#039;s share price is down 51% since the start of the year.<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;The losers are still out there&#039;<\/h2>\n<p>Investors in Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 appear to have bought the AI-boosterism argument.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;All three pointed to AI adoption as the reason enterprise customers are signing larger and longer commitments,&quot; Leaman said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Atlassian&#039;s AI-powered service products crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue. Twilio&#039;s existing customers are spending more, not less. That is a meaningful shift from the doom-and-gloom thesis that AI would cannibalize SaaS spending,&quot; she added.<\/p>\n<p>While those three companies have shrugged off some of the SaaSpocalypse fears for the moment, they are just a small slice of the software market.<\/p>\n<p>Investors will be watching closely when Salesforce, whose shares are down about 30% since the start of the year, and other software companies report earnings later this month and next.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The SaaSpocalypse fear was never really about the whole sector disappearing; it was about a brutal bifurcation between winners and losers,&quot; Leaman said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Last night showed us some of the winners, while the losers are still out there.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. Bloomberg\/Getty Images Atlassian, Twilio, and Five9 shares soar as AI boosts their earnings. All three companies have previously been cited as victims of the so-called SaaSpocalypse. SaaS stocks have taken a hammering this year over fears AI will make some software obsolete. Reports of the death of SaaS may have been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}