AI Agents to Reshape SaaS Models: Industry Leaders Forecast $300B Opportunity

The AI Impact Summit 2026 has become a focal point for the debate on whether autonomous AI agents represent an existential threat to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry. While the rise of vibe coding and agentic workflows suggest a future where software is generated on the fly, leaders from Salesforce and India's top IT firms argue that the core value of SaaS—observability, governance, and deep workflow integration—remains indispensable. The consensus emerging from New Delhi suggests that while the delivery mechanism of software is changing, the fundamental business of solving enterprise pain points is only expanding.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson and CEO of Salesforce India, addressed the growing speculation that AI agents could render traditional SaaS obsolete. She cautioned against oversimplification, noting that the SaaS model is built on more than just code; it is built on understanding complex workflows, ensuring auditability, and driving user adoption. This perspective highlights a critical moat for established SaaS providers: the trust layer. As enterprises move from experimental large language model usage to production-grade AI agents, the need for governance and observability becomes a primary requirement that nascent, agent-only startups may struggle to provide without the underlying infrastructure of a mature SaaS platform.

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Salil Parekh, CEO of Infosys, provided a concrete figure for this transition, identifying a $300 billion services opportunity.

For global IT services giants like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, the rise of AI agents is being framed as a massive expansion of their addressable market rather than a threat to their business models. K. Krithivasan, CEO of TCS, noted that the role of the software engineer is shifting toward high-level architecture and rigorous validation. This shift implies that while AI will handle the heavy lifting of code generation, the human-in-the-loop will focus on the more complex task of ensuring these systems work within the constraints of a global enterprise. Krithivasan’s vision is not one of a shrinking sector, but of a massive explosion in the volume and complexity of problems that can now be solved economically.

Salil Parekh, CEO of Infosys, provided a concrete figure for this transition, identifying a $300 billion services opportunity. This opportunity lies in the orchestration of foundation models and specialized agents to unlock measurable business value. By positioning themselves as the orchestrators of these AI ecosystems, services firms aim to capture the value created by the gap between raw AI capabilities and enterprise-ready solutions. This is echoed by HCL Technologies CEO C Vijayakumar, who pointed out that a persistent gap still exists between foundational models and the efficiency required for enterprise use cases. He noted that foundational models cannot yet be applied most efficiently to enterprise scenarios without significant customization.

The immediate future for the AI and SaaS sectors will likely be defined by data rationalization and application modernization. Before an enterprise can deploy a fleet of autonomous agents, its underlying data must be structured and accessible. This prerequisite ensures that the IT services sector remains a critical partner for any organization looking to leverage agentic AI. Far from being rendered obsolete, the SaaS and IT services industries are entering a phase of hyper-productivity where the focus shifts from how to build to what to solve. The next 24 months will likely see a surge in orchestration platforms that bridge the gap between foundational AI and the rigorous demands of the modern enterprise.