In Episode 3 of The Futurmatic Podcast, Gary Zhou, Det Ansinn, and Jesse Berdinka unpack one of the biggest shifts happening in software right now: the repricing of SaaS in the age of AI. For the last 20 years, SaaS was built around a simple assumption: more users meant more seats, more seats meant more revenue, and more revenue meant more company value. AI is breaking that assumption. When AI can perform work, resolve tickets, update systems, generate workflows, support customers, write code, and operate across tools, the old per-seat model starts to feel misaligned. If one AI-enabled operator can do the work of five, ten, or hundreds of people, what exactly is the software company charging for? This episode explores why the “SaaS apocalypse” narrative is too simplistic. SaaS is not dead. But the old math is changing. We discuss: • Why per-seat pricing is under pressure • How AI changes the total addressable market for SaaS companies • The shift from software budgets to labor budgets • Why some SaaS products become more valuable in an AI world • Why low-value SaaS tools and AI puffery will get exposed • How Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and others fit into the changing landscape • Why headless software and agent-driven workflows may redefine the user experience • How AI changes build vs buy decisions for businesses • Why outcome-based pricing sounds ideal, but is difficult to measure • What buyers should ask before paying more for AI features • Why systems of record, workflow engines, infrastructure, and trusted data may become the real moats The core question is not whether SaaS survives. The better question is: What kind of SaaS survives when AI changes who does the work, how work gets priced, and where value actually lives? This is a conversation for founders, operators, investors, CTOs, CFOs, product leaders, and anyone trying to understand how AI is reshaping the economics of software. SaaS is not dead. But the seat is losing power. And the future of software may be less about how many people log in, and more about how much work gets done. Subscribe to The Futurmatic Podcast for more conversations on AI, software, business models, automation, and the future of work.
