A growing number of companies are relegating their traditional business software to little more than a system of record, while shifting the bulk of the actual work onto AI agents supplied by newer providers such as Anthropic , according to a report from The Information detailing a broader shift in corporate technology budgets.
Enterprise Software · The Budget Shift
SaaS Becomes the Filing Cabinet — Agents Do the Work
Companies are keeping legacy business software as a mere system of record and shifting the real operational work onto AI agents from newer providers — reallocating budget away from incumbent, per-seat SaaS.
Per-seat
The pricing model now under pressure from both customers and vendors
$300B
Software valuation swings tied to the rise of agents — the "SaaSpocalypse"
API-first
Headless design becomes essential as agents, not humans, consume services
Where the value moves
The software stack is being re-layered — spending flows from the interface toward the agents reaching the data.
Traditional SaaS
Human seats · UI clicks
Data / system of record
value shrinking to a low-margin data layer
→
Agent-led stack
AI agents · run the work
Automation logic
Legacy data (kept as source of truth)
budget flows here
The case for it
Ripping out entrenched systems is costly and risky
Legacy software won't vanish — it becomes agent-accessible
Modernize workflows without a wholesale migration
The friction
Many legacy apps lack modern APIs — an integration bottleneck
Screenshot + computer-vision automation echoes RPA's reliability woes
Maintenance and trust concerns temper even proponents
The open question
Software's value is increasingly defined less by the interface people use, and more by the data agents can reach.
If agents get reliable
Budget accelerates toward AI providers across fragmented legacy systems
If trust problems persist
Incumbents keep leverage as indispensable custodians of enterprise data — some already weighing a "tollgate" to charge agents for access
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