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WSJ's Take On the Week

Could AI Disruption Fears Trigger a Software M&A Boom?

2/22/202630 min

In this week's episode of WSJ’s Take On the Week, co-host Miriam Gottfried and guest host Dan Gallagher, a tech columnist for Heard on the Street, chat with Jefferies software analyst Brent Thill about the recent turbulence in the business software market. They talk about the growing fears that AI will replace the need for traditional software-as-a-service, or SaaS, platforms like Intuit, Salesforce, and Workday. They analyze how the narrative around AI "vibe coding"—where businesses generate their own apps using simple text prompts—has led to a sharp selloff in cloud software stocks. They also note other factor...

Clips

AI Won’t Replace SaaS
Security Breach Prediction
Pay For Outcomes, Not Clicks
Don’t Let AI File Taxes
“Massive M&A Boom” Coming
AI Eating Its Own Young
Underweight Software, Overweight Infra
Where AI Agents Live

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

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  3. Miriam Gottfried· Host0:29

    [gentle music] Hi, everyone. I'm Miriam Gottfried, and joining me today is my colleague, Heard on the Street tech columnist, Dan Gallagher. Hi, Dan.

  4. Dan Gallagher· Host0:39

    Hey, how's it going?

  5. Miriam Gottfried· Host0:41

    It's going well. Glad to have you on. So Dan, I am old enough to remember when business soft- software, also known as software as a service, or SaaS, was one of the hottest sectors, but it's been kind of having a rough go of it recently, um, because of fears that AI will sort of replace the need for business computing software. Um, what have you been seeing out there, Dan?

  6. Dan Gallagher· Host1:06

    Uh, well, you're exactly right, that fear is out there, and I'm actually old enough to remember before we had software as a service when- [laughs] It was before that ... software was this really big, uh, the stuff that was, like, installed on a, on a company's, like, premises, on their own servers, you know. And we saw that transition happen. Um, you know, a lot of the older companies ended up, like, consolidating or getting boughtter out, and then these, these what we call cloud software companies

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