Salesforce and Friends Deserve This AI Squeeze
The days of easy SaaS margins are numbered.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
Product releases from Anthropic PBC last week triggered a nearly $1 trillion selloff of enterprise software stocks, extending a decline that’s been on course for some time. Salesforce Inc., which sells customer relationship management software, and Workday Inc., which provides financial management software, are both down more than 40% over the past 12 months. On Wednesday, the market rout spread to wealth management firms and, it seemed, any company that appeared to be in the crosshairs of artificial intelligence.
This sell-first, ask-questions-later moment is overdone. In the case of enterprise software makers, investors are missing a crucial technical distinction between vendors like Salesforce, and AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Cowork that suddenly look like a threat.