AI agents are poised to challenge traditional enterprise software business models, placing up to $234 billion in application software spending at risk by 2030 as they increasingly bypass human users and interact directly with business systems, according to Gartner. “You are no longer buying software primarily for people; you are increasingly buying it for agents,” George Brocklehurst, managing vice president at Gartner, told CIO. “For a couple of decades, software has been evaluated on the interface, the user experience: usability, workflow, training. When AI agents become the primary user, all that depreciates.” Gartner estimates that the exposed spending would account for about 20% of enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) spending by the end of the decade.

Full report : As autonomous systems become primary users of business applications, traditional SaaS vendors may face pressure to shift from seat-based pricing and UX-led differentiation.