Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made an attempt to dispel fears of a "Saaspocalypse," saying it is an "incredible time" to be a software company.
Speaking at a keynote presentation at Computex, a tech show in Taiwan, Huang said the rise of agentic AI has led to major breakthroughs, including in tool use.
"A lot of people have said, 'Jensen, AI is coming. Agentic AI is coming. Therefore, all of the software companies are going to go out of business.' I said it's exactly the opposite," he said at the start of his speech on Monday.
Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can accomplish tasks with minimal human intervention. Huang said that because there will be many agents doing work, they will be using "more tools than ever."
"This is actually an incredible time to be a software company, but the software has to be presented to the agent in a way that the agent can use it," he added.
Huang's comments are an optimistic angle on what many have considered an existential crisis for software firms, where AI tools threaten the business models of companies like Salesforce and Workday. We at Business Insider have tried our hand at building alternatives to popular tools like Asana and Wix using AI, and have come up with usable web apps.
The fears have led to a sharp decline in software stocks; Atlassian, Salesforce, and SAP's shares have all fallen by more than 20% since the start of the year.
This is not the first time Huang has said that AI would keep software companies relevant. Speaking at a February Cisco AI event, he said that AI replacing software companies was "the most illogical thing in the world, and time will prove itself."
And AI leaders, such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have said that while software companies need to adapt, they will not be obsolete anytime soon.
