Bill Gurley has some suggestions on how you might invest in the so-called SaaSpocalypse if you believe the companies still have value.
Software-as-a-Service stocks have stumbled to start 2026. Investors worry that new AI generative tools — particularly Claude Code’s latest app-building update — could become direct competitors with legacy SaaS giants like Salesforce, Atlassian, and DocuSign.
Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Gurley, the longtime Benchmark general partner, acknowledged the concerns and compared it to another disruptive moment in tech.
“Right after Facebook went public, there was a concern about this mobile transition, and their stock went from $42 to like $18. That was fear of a technology disruption,” he said.
Still, Gurley emphasized that today’s SaaS fears feel unusually widespread.
“I’ve never seen a disruption that had this much anxiety and go across so many companies,” he said.
Yet he noted that even AI-native companies aren’t abandoning traditional software vendors. Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, uses tools from Workday and Salesforce, he said.
“They’re paying for these things,” he said.
If the stocks continue to fall, Gurley suggested that investors who believe in the SaaS companies channel Warren Buffett, who has long argued that moments of panic are the perfect time to buy.
“You shouldn’t be blogging about what’s wrong with the prices,” he said. “You should be quiet and picking them up off the floor.”
He’s worried about circular investment
Gurley expressed concern about the increasing circularity of deals between AI companies and the firms building their massive physical infrastructure.
“This is a little bit odd that we got started this way from the very beginning,” he said, referring to early transactions between Microsoft and OpenAI that involved cloud credits flowing back into Microsoft’s Azure business.
There’s a fresh example of intertwined AI and infrastructure agreements on Tuesday morning: Meta and Advanced Micro Devices announced a deal in which Meta would buy six gigawatts of computing power from the chipmaker.
The arrangement could also result in Meta owning up to 10% of AMD’s stock.
Gurley said he once described similar AI and infrastructure deal structures to ChatGPT without naming the companies involved.
“It spit out words like Enron and WorldCom,” he said. “All I did was describe the structure of the deals. I didn’t say which companies they were.”
Gurley said he doesn’t think regulators will step in to fix the circularity issue.
“When it comes undone — and it will come undone one day for reasons we can talk about — I think people are going to point these things and say they shouldn’t have existed,” he said.
AI as ‘jet fuel’
For workers worried about AI’s impact on their jobs, Gurley was far more optimistic.
He called AI “jet fuel” for people passionate about their work (something he has also said on X), and argued that the tools can dramatically accelerate skills and productivity.
“You can learn faster than you could have ever learned at any point in history right now,” he said. “You can fire this thing up and get it on your side.”
Even in an era of sweeping technological disruption, Gurley said he wouldn’t choose a different path if he had to start all over again.
“If we lived in a society where all jobs paid the same, I would have still done venture capital,” he said. “I just had so much fun being a part of it.”
Gurley didn’t respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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