This is a great point. I think the biggest shift will be from software people use to software that does the work. The move away from purely per-seat pricing could be especially significant. If AI agents can complete entire workflows, customers will naturally expect pricing to reflect outcomes, usage, or value rather than simply the number of employees with accounts. The real challenge, though, will be reliability. Building an agent that can perform a task is one thing; building one that businesses can trust with important workflows is much harder. Long term, I think the winners will be SaaS companies that combine AI + proprietary data + deep integrations + reliable execution rather than simply adding an AI feature to an existing product.

I think the shift toward AI agents and agentic workflows is one of the biggest developments. The idea of software actually completing tasks instead of just assisting is a major change.

It will be interesting to see how pricing models evolve as AI agents take on more work. Thanks for sharing this.

Given the estimates as stated above according to Gartner, its safe to say that in the nearest future Agentic AI could totally make traditional SaaS companies go bankrupt and that’s a significant change in dynamics. I also agree 100 percent that AI is no longer being positioned only as a feature that helps users work faster but also as agents that perform tasks and automate workflow, moving from what employees manually operate to something that understands and performs tasks systematically.

I share the same sentiments as the poster

For decades, the entire software industry relied on charging businesses per human login. But as AI agents and automation take over tasks that once required entire teams, the traditional per-seat model is breaking down. Charging clients for software seats when AI is actively reducing headcount or hours worked makes no economic sense.

What stands out to me is how AI could change the way SaaS products are priced and used. If software can actually complete tasks instead of just helping people do them, paying for outcomes could make more sense than paying per user. I think this shift could change the SaaS model quite a lot over the next few years.

we are moving from a world of human operators to a world of human managers overseeing AI outcomes

I think the most important part of this is the potential shift from seat based software to outcome based software. If an AI agent can perform work that previously required several employees to operate multiple tools, pricing based primarily on the number of human users starts to look less intuitive.

The shift from software people use to software that does the work is one of the biggest developments in SaaS. If AI agents can complete entire workflows, customers will naturally expect pricing to reflect outcomes, usage, or value rather than simply the number of employees with accounts.

I think the pricing shift could end up being just as important as the technology itself, if software is increasingly doing the work instead of simply giving employees tools to do it, measuring value by seats starts to feel outdated, the interesting question is whether outcome based pricing can stay predictable enough for businesses to actually budget around it.