“Saaspocalypse” is one of those terms that has been circulating just long enough to be familiar, but not quite settled. It has also been around long enough — and discussed widely enough — that we can move beyond reacting to it, and start to form a clearer view on what it actually means in practice.
For the uninitiated, SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It is a cloud-based software delivery model where a provider hosts applications and makes them accessible to users over the internet, typically through a web browser or mobile app.
Instead of purchasing, installing, and maintaining software locally on your own computers and servers, you rent or subscribe to it.
So, the origin of SaaSpocalype is fairly straightforward — if tools like GitHub Copilot, Replit, Claude Code and other AI-assisted development tools make it dramatically easier to build software, then the rationale for buying it (particularly repeatedly, on a subscription basis!), starts to shift. The “SaaSpocalypse” was certainly felt in February of this year when a major AI product release triggered a sharp market reaction. In a single day, around $300 billion in value was wiped from SaaS and software-heavy companies, with major players like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Adobe falling by roughly 7%, and Intuit dropping nearly 11%.
Organisations that once depended on vendors to provide functionality may therefore begin to revisit that familiar question of “should we build, or should we buy?
This is not a new conversation. Nor is it a fringe one. “Build vs buy” has been debated for decades. Variations of this argument have been discussed in venture circles, engineering communities, and boardrooms for many years.
What’s changed? What hasn’t?
The barrier to building software has always been less about ideas and more about effort.
Teams needed specialist skills, time, and coordination to translate a requirement into something usable, supportable, and secure. For most organisations, it made sense to buy software that already solved those problems — even if it meant some compromise.
That underlying logic has not changed.
What has changed is the level of effort now required to build something useful. Tools that assist with code generation, testing, and deployment have made it significantly easier to create applications quickly. Tasks that once required a full development cycle can now be prototyped — and even productionised — in a fraction of the time.
Despite all this, we’re confident to say SaaS is not disappearing. It’s always interesting to note in the context of this discussion that even the companies at the centre of this shift continue to rely on it. Anthropic, for example, is reported to use Workday for HR, and OpenAI has also been confirmed as a Workday customer for core enterprise operations.
The idea that organisations will suddenly abandon all subscriptions and rebuild everything themselves is not a serious one.
Why SaaS isn’t going away
At its core, SaaS vendors do more than provide functionality. What keeps them entrenched is less the complexity of the software itself than data and integration. Providers such as Salesforce act as custodians of client data — controlling how it is consumed and accessed while the client still owns it. Platforms like Workday and ServiceNow manage heavily integrated workflows that span the entire enterprise architecture.
Systems of record — whether for payroll, accounting, registry, or core administration — embed years of regulatory logic, edge cases, integrations, and operational processes. Replacing them is not simply a matter of replicating features. It requires taking on the ongoing burden of maintenance, compliance, and support.
There is a commercial dimension too. Enterprise customers typically sign multi-year deals with complex commercial arrangements that make it difficult to simply opt out. This is a key reason the shift is not an immediate threat, even if it sits on the horizon.
What organisations should be doing
Where we think AI-assisted development will make the most immediate difference is not in replacing core systems, but in how organisations work around them.
Specifically, in using AI to customise existing systems, or to build smaller, targeted tools that sit alongside them — work that would previously have been handled through configuration, workaround, or an additional SaaS product, add on, or marketplace app.
This holds true for super funds. Members, regulators, and operating environments all depend on stable, well understood systems of record. Replacing those systems simply because it is now easier to build software would introduce more risk than it removes.
Instead, the opportunity sits at the edges. It is likely to be most valuable in areas that are:
- Narrow in scope
- Well understood
- Heavily manual
- Or poorly served by existing tools
None of these feel particularly transformative in isolation, and certainly not “apocalyptic”. But taken together, they represent a meaningful shift in capability.
In practice for super funds this may look like:
- Automating elements of board reporting
- Streamlining parts of a PDS update workflow
- Connecting systems in more tailored ways
- Addressing pockets of technical debt that were previously deferred
Organisations that previously had to accept the limits of their systems — or accommodate highly specific operational nuances — can now address them in more targeted ways, with far less effort than before.
There is also a defensive implication here. As the ability to build increases, so too does the risk of accumulating software in different forms — through both SaaS subscriptions AND internal builds — making judgement about what not to do increasingly important.
Organisations should also keep an eye on how the platforms themselves are evolving. What SaaS vendors do at their core — managing the data, controlling the integration, and operating the workflows — will not go away; what changes is the experience on top. Headless agents point to one likely direction: platforms running fully automated, end-to-end workflows behind the interface, rather than waiting for users to click through screens.
…greatly exaggerated
Framed this way, the “SaaSpocalypse” is less about SaaS disappearing, and more about its boundary shifting.
Based on the technology now and foreseeable developments, core platforms will remain. In many cases they will become even more important as systems of record. What is changing is what sits alongside them — the workflows, integrations, and extensions that shape how they are actually used, and what can realistically be built inhouse.
In that sense, it is not a moment to abandon all SaaS, but it also certainly isn’t a moment to continue accumulating it without question.
Another layer here is that SaaS vendors themselves are not static. Many are rapidly integrating AI into their own platforms, which will inevitably influence how these dynamics play out. That may be a story worth telling separately.