One month, Two AI triggers. Software stocks explode... Let's call it what it is... apocalypstick You may remember the one from Feb 3rd when Anthropic's agent release hit Salesforce, Monday.com, etc with the market dropping about 5% Yesterday, Citrini Research released a hypothetical scenario where essentially most of the white collar jobs go away in 2028 and it triggers a mortgage crisis. That same day in 2026... IBM drops 13%, Datadog 11%, and CrowdStrike 10%. Generally a SaaS drom of about 4% Let’s unpack that. Could AI reshape jobs? Yes it will. But it doesn't mean all these workers will be going to be jobless and defaulting on their mortgages The scenario misses how AI actually works Especially in white-collar work. Roles will change, but blanket job loss predictions ignore how hard it is to make great AI systems What I think is actually happening is these 'shocks' are rightsizing valuations and we're seeing a correction. Not that AI isn't awesome, but it's a lot of work. Human work. AI is a tool Neither apocaclypse nor miracle. Maybe we frame it as apocalypstick? We'll come out the other side with a new look and those who are targeted in their AI beauty routine might be able to buy a house at a reasonable rate? Correction or crash?
Totally agree Vince Lynch I see it more as a post COVID correction vs AI driven efficiencies are already affecting large enterprises (of course AI story makes for better headlines). It reflects the overall sluggish economy leading to profitability pressure. As many companies cut costs, the layoffs get the headlines but software spend naturally declines and there is pressure to consolidate there as well. When growth slows for SaaS companies, of course there is a correction on their market cap. Of course I have seen AI productivity gains first hand in my own company, but I think large enterprises are still quite far from realizing such gains.
I still think that if we double down on the users and understand the changes they are going through and their needs we can stabilize and maybe even ride the next wave
Building great AI needs human skill.
Classic. In SaaS replacement scenarios the real bar is not demo level feature parity but integration correctness, auth and permissions logic, audit logs, schema evolution, observability, and security hardening.Where Citrini is strongest technically is in intermediation because a hybrid system that uses deterministic orchestration plus LLM parsing can arbitrage marketplaces without needing perfect reasoning.You do not need zero hallucination to optimize price comparison across APIs, you need bounded tool calls, constraint satisfaction, and reliable execution paths.Where the macro leap gets fragile is assuming that automation of tasks equals elimination of income, because non zero model error creates entire layers of verification, governance, monitoring, and workflow design jobs.Historically task decomposition reshapes labor faster than it deletes it, especially when systems require human oversight to manage tail risk and distribution shift.
‘The scenario misses how AI actually works Especially in white-collar work. Roles will change, but blanket job loss predictions ignore how hard it is to make great AI systems What I think is actually happening is these 'shocks' are rightsizing valuations and we're seeing a correction. Not that AI isn't awesome, but it's a lot of work. Human work. ‘
Nice Vince!
Great insight Vince!
Here's the paper: https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic