NVIDIA CEO says it’s an ‘Incredible Time’ for Software Firms

Speaking at a keynote presentation at Computex, a tech show in Taiwan, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said it’s currently an “incredible time” for software companies despite fears that AI could render software coding obsolete – a concern that tech workers often call the ‘SaaS apocalypse’.

“A lot of people have said, 'Jensen, AI is coming. Agentic AI is coming. Therefore, all of the software companies are going to go out of business.' I said it's exactly the opposite,” Jensen said during the speech.

“This is actually an incredible time to be a software company, but the software has to be presented to the agent in a way that the agent can use it,” he added.

While Jensen’s comments come across as optimistic, many in the tech industry worry that AI tools are threatening the traditional business models of SaaS firms, such as companies like Salesforce and Workday.

These industry-wide concerns have resulted in a decline in software stocks, with companies like Atlassian, Salesforce and SAP’s shares falling by more than 20% since the start of the year.

Potential benefits of AI in the SaaS industry

This isn’t the first time Jensen has highlighted how AI could theoretically prove beneficial to the SaaS industry.

Speaking at a February Cisco AI event, he said that AI replacing software companies was “the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself”.

Leading figures in the AI tech world, such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have also stated that while software companies need to adapt, they will not be obsolete anytime soon.

When asked about the fate of software companies amid AI development during an Anthropic event, Dario responded saying that companies can no longer succeed solely on the complexity of their software.

“I think if your moat is ‘our software is complex and difficult to write, and we can write it, and others can’t match it,’ I think that’s going away,” Dario said.

In an interview with TBPN, Sam said something similar regarding AI’s effect on SaaS business models.

He said that some SaaS companies will remain highly valuable by leveraging AI for themselves, while others are just a “thinner layer” and won't survive the shift. 

Established firms with strong core systems who use AI strategically are the ones who are best positioned, he added. 

Following Jensen’s enthusiasm for software companies and his dismissal over AI disrupting the industry, software stocks saw a market-wide surge, with major companies like ServiceNow growing by 10%, IBM by 12% and Salesforce, Atlassian and Hubspot each growing more than 6%.

Criticism of layoffs amid AI growth

Previously, Jensen has criticised corporate leaders of software companies and lead executives across all industries who attribute layoffs to AI integration.

Jensen says these explanations are “lazy” and questions how companies can justify job cuts before the technology has been fully adopted.

Speaking to Singapore broadcaster CNA, Jensen said many executives were oversimplifying the relationship between AI adoption and workforce reductions. 

He said: “I think the narrative that connects AI to job loss for many of the CEOs that are doing it, it is just too lazy. AI has just arrived. How is it possible they're already losing jobs?”

Jensen argued that linking layoffs to AI “doesn't make any sense” when gen AI tools only became broadly practical for businesses recently.

“How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?” he added.