Enterprise application software spending worth as much as $234 billion could be disrupted by agentic artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030 as businesses shift from using traditional software interfaces to AI systems that complete work on their behalf, according to business and technology insights company Gartner.
Gartner estimates that the amount at risk represents about 20% of enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) spending by the end of the decade.
Agentic AI refers to AI systems that can perform tasks across multiple business applications without requiring users to switch between different software programs. Instead of employees manually using several tools, AI agents can complete workflows from start to finish.
“Agentic AI changes the economics of software,” said George Brocklehurst, managing VP at Gartner. “Agentic systems deliver outcomes directly, bypassing traditional user experience (UX)-heavy applications and making the software invisible. This breaks the link between user growth and revenue growth for many enterprise software vendors.”
The research firm said this shift could fundamentally change how enterprise software is built, sold, and priced. Rather than paying for software based on the number of users or licenses, organizations are expected to prioritize business results delivered by AI.
“The shift to agentic AI will also lead to a redefinition of ‘Saaspocalypse,’ the disaggregation of the legacy SaaS market as we know it today,” Brocklehurst said. “This is less an apocalypse and more of a metamorphosis.”
According to Gartner, enterprise buyers are also changing how they evaluate software.
“Enterprise buyers will deemphasize buying more new tools or dashboards,” Brocklehurst said. “They want better outcomes and adding more AI features often creates more cost, not better outcomes. Better outcomes from AI require systems that can retain deep institutional memory and customer context over time.”
Some software providers are already offering agentic AI platforms that automate business processes across multiple systems and retain customer knowledge to improve business outcomes, although these deployments often require significant consulting and implementation services.
Gartner said traditional software vendors face increasing pressure to move beyond interface-based products and instead deliver AI-driven outcomes. Companies that continue to rely on dashboard-based software and per-user licensing models could lose market share to AI-native startups and providers offering agentic platforms.
“While this shift is posing an existential threat for vendors who are defending legacy dashboards and seat-based models, it creates a substantial revenue opportunity for vendors who are enabling and developing services and platforms to support agentic enabled cross-domain workflows,” Brocklehurst said.