Gartner warns agentic AI threatens $234bn SaaS spend

Gartner estimates that USD $234 billion of enterprise application software spending is at risk from agentic AI, with the exposure reaching about 20% of enterprise application SaaS spending by 2030.

The estimate reflects what Gartner calls agentic arbitrage, in which AI agents complete tasks across several systems and reduce the need for people to move between multiple software interfaces.

That shift threatens one of the core assumptions behind the SaaS market: that revenue rises as more users are added through seat-based licensing. If AI agents take over more routine and cross-functional work, software suppliers may find that user growth no longer translates as directly into sales.

"Agentic AI changes the economics of software," said George Brocklehurst, Managing Vice President at Gartner.

"Agentic systems deliver outcomes directly, bypassing traditional user experience (UX)-heavy applications and making the software invisible. This breaks the link between user growth and revenue growth for many enterprise software vendors."

The warning points to a broader shift in how business software is valued. Rather than paying for access to interfaces, dashboards and large bundles of features, buyers are expected to place more weight on whether a system can complete work with limited human intervention and produce measurable results.

Changing buyer priorities

Enterprise customers are already rethinking what they want from software purchases. In Gartner's view, adding AI functions to existing products does not automatically improve results and may instead raise costs if those tools still depend on the same fragmented workflows.

"It will also lead to a redefinition of 'Saaspocalypse', the disaggregation of the legacy SaaS market as we know it today," Brocklehurst said.

He argued that the shift should not be seen as the end of SaaS, but as a change in its structure. Traditional applications may remain in place, yet more of their value could move to an agentic layer that works across systems and carries out tasks directly.

"Enterprise buyers will deemphasise buying more new tools or dashboards," Brocklehurst said.

"They want better outcomes, and adding more AI features often creates more cost, not better outcomes. Better outcomes from AI require systems that can retain deep institutional memory and customer context over time."

That emphasis on context and memory suggests a different competitive test for vendors. Suppliers may need to show that their products can retain and use customer-specific knowledge over time, rather than simply process transactions or present information through a user interface.

Pressure on incumbents

For established software providers, the risk is that customers shift spending away from interface-led tools toward platforms or services that orchestrate work across many applications. Some suppliers are already bringing agentic products to market that aim to execute workflows autonomously, co-ordinate activity across systems and retain customer knowledge.

Those systems, however, often still require substantial services work to deploy and adapt within organisations. That creates an opening not only for software makers, but also for consultancies, integrators and AI-native newcomers that can design and manage workflow changes around AI agents.

"As organisations increasingly use agentic AI systems, the user interface is no longer a differentiator," Brocklehurst said.

"Legacy SaaS market share will be cannibalised by incumbents and taken by new entrants delivering horizontal agentic platforms."

Horizontal platforms, in this context, are designed to work across departments and software environments rather than within a single functional application. If such platforms become the main way work is triggered and completed, they could sit between employees and the underlying software products that companies currently buy directly.

That prospect could have direct consequences for pricing. Vendors that still depend heavily on seat licences and dashboard-centred products may need to move toward charging for completed work, measurable business outcomes or usage tied to automated processes.

Services opportunity

The disruption also creates a revenue opportunity for companies that help businesses redesign operations around AI-driven workflows. As agentic systems spread, service providers may benefit from demand for integration, process redesign and ongoing management of systems that span several software products.

"While this shift is posing an existential threat for vendors who are defending legacy dashboards and seat-based models, it creates a substantial revenue opportunity for vendors that enable and develop services and platforms to support agentic-enabled cross-domain workflows," Brocklehurst said.

Gartner also said AI-native startups and service providers may be able to position themselves as the layer that links enterprise systems together. By doing so, they could aim to capture both spending now directed at incumbent applications and additional budget released if buyers see a clear return from automation.

"Ultimately, they can capture not just existing spend, but incremental budget unlocked through ROI upside," Brocklehurst said.