Software’s Epic Comeback, Meta’s AI Layoffs Blunder, South Korea Stock Market Chaos

**Alex Kantrowitz** (0:00)
Software rebounds and puts SaaS-pocalypse speculation to rest. Or does it? Meta tries to replace humans with AI, and it doesn't go so well. And is it an AI bubble? Don't ask the traders in South Korea. That's coming up on a Big Technology Podcast Friday edition, right after this.

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**Alex Kantrowitz** (1:00)
Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have a great show for you today. We're going to talk about the state of the SaaSpocalypse. Now that software companies like Salesforce, Adobe and Microsoft seem to have rebounded from their SaaSpocalypse lows, was this entire thing just an overreaction? We're also going to talk about a program that Meta tried to put into place to replace its human workers with AI and why it failed. And then we're going to take a look at the South Korean stock market and talk a little bit about why the fears of an AI bubble may be justified, but it might not be a market-wide bubble. It might just play out in certain areas like it certainly has with the South Korean stock market. So joining us as always on Fridays to do it is Ranjan Roy of Marge's. Ranjan, welcome back. Great to see you.

**Ranjan Roy** (1:48)
SaaSpocalypse is over. Benioff has ascended to the Iron Throne.
It's a new day here right before we, the summer ends.

**Alex Kantrowitz** (1:58)
I do want to say that I did wake up seeing an image of Mark Benioff and Dario Amadeus sitting next to each other, starting to shill this new anthropic and Salesforce partnership. And there was somebody right in my mentions, actually kind of addressed to both of us since we've been taking the SaaSpocalypse warning seriously. And this person writes, Kantrowitz and Ranjan Roy caught an ass-whupping with the bit. Did you see this?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:30)
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**Alex Kantrowitz** (2:33)
And I was just like, okay, all right, this is, you know what, let's lead the show with this because maybe it's off where it really is back.
So let me at least introduce this. Okay, so this is from CNBC. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff says, the SaaS apocalypse is nonsense and here's why. Basically, Salesforce turned in some incredible earnings. The share surged more than 12% after the enterprise software giant delivered a strong quarter and issued better than expected guidance. Earlier this year, this is again from CNBC, investors feared that increasingly capable AI models could allow the businesses to accomplish more with fewer traditional software subscriptions, undermining the industry's pricing model. Wall Street also worried that companies could use AI to create the software tools they're paying for and Salesforce shares went down 22% this year through Wednesday's close. But guess what? Salesforce has rebounded and so have many of the other software names. I guess what Benioff was saying and is trying to say and what the market is finally accepting is that if AI replaces software, it's going to be slow, it's not going to happen overnight, which to me has always been the case. I don't know if the fundamentals changed, but certainly the SaaS apocalypse is on pause. So Ranjan, I just want to get your broader reaction to this.
Was it an overreaction by Wall Street in the beginning, and what do you think we can read into what's happening now?

**Ranjan Roy** (3:58)
All right. This is very relevant to my life here in Enterprise AI. So let's talk through this at a couple of different levels. But I want to start with the announcement itself on CloudForce and Dario and Mark sitting next to each other at a table, and I definitely want to get into the dynamics of that. But what's amazing to me in terms of the marketing chops of Salesforce and Mark Benioff is the actual announcement. I don't want to say it's a complete non-event, but you could already do this in Salesforce and Cloud. At Rider, where I work, people connect to Salesforce and run all types of queries. It's actually one of the most valuable things I've found for my day to day. You can do things in ChatGPT. So the actual connecting Salesforce data with an AI entry point as a layer over it is not really news, but to package it all up, to have Dario sitting next to you, and to have your stock pop 22 percent, God bless Mark Benioff, because that man can market like no other.