The AI wave won't necessarily kill major SaaS players like Salesforce. Instead, the competitive battleground is shifting to who can build the best new agentic interface for their existing platform. Incumbents are adapting quickly, challenging AI-native startups.

Salesforce is navigating the AI transition by championing a hybrid model of "apps and agents." This strategy positions its traditional software ("apps" for humans) as the foundation, which is now extended and made more powerful by AI ("agents"). This narrative preserves the value of their core offerings while embracing AI's productivity gains.

Salesforce is countering the threat of AI building better user interfaces by making its own platform "headless." This allows developers to use tools like Claude to build custom front-ends on top of Salesforce's robust backend, neutralizing the "clunky UI" complaint and making the platform more indispensable.

The race in enterprise AI isn't just about agent capabilities, but about owning the central dashboard where employees direct agents across all applications (Salesforce, Jira, etc.). Companies like OpenAI and Microsoft are vying to become this primary interface, controlling the customer relationship and relegating other apps to the background.

The threat of AI models replicating SaaS features is real. Superhuman's defense isn't a superior core technology but a platform strategy. The bet is that users won't build their own tools if the platform offers a powerful network effect of pre-built, integrated agents that work everywhere, creating a defensible ecosystem.

OpenAI's partnership with ServiceNow isn't about building a competing product; it's about embedding its "agentic" AI directly into established platforms. This strategy focuses on becoming the core intelligence layer for existing enterprise systems, allowing AI to act as an automated teammate within familiar workflows.

Leading AI companies like Anthropic are positioning themselves as the infrastructure layer for intelligence, akin to how AWS provides infrastructure for computing. Their strategy is to partner with and enable existing SaaS companies, not to destroy them by competing directly at the application level.

SaaS products like Salesforce won't be easily ripped out. The real danger is that new AI agents will operate across all SaaS tools, becoming the primary user interface and capturing the next wave of value. This relegates existing SaaS platforms to a lower, less valuable infrastructure layer.

Established software leaders should not try to innovate on all new AI technologies organically. A more effective strategy is to let the VC community fund early-stage bets, then use strong balance sheets to acquire the proven winners and integrate them into existing platforms, as Salesforce has done.