We Can Build The Software. We Still Need The Service.
AI made software easier to create. It also made the machinery behind the best software more valuable.
For years, SaaS had a simple advantage: someone else built the software, maintained it and kept it running.
AI changes the first part of that equation. Increasingly, we can build the interface ourselves. We can generate code, automate workflows and assemble applications that once required a vendor and a monthly subscription.
But that does not make the service disappear.
ChatGPT, Claude, Suno and a growing class of AI-native platforms show why. Their value is not primarily the interface. It is the capability behind it: models, compute, infrastructure, data, orchestration, reliability and continuous improvement.
AI may weaken SaaS products whose main advantage was simply owning the software.
At the same time, it strengthens another model entirely: services that provide something far more difficult to reproduce than an application.
We can build the software.
What we increasingly pay for is the machine behind it.