A forecast says the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) agents will reshape the revenue model of enterprise software.
Market research firm Gartner said on the 2nd that from this year through 2030, up to $234 billion (about 362 trillion won) in corporations application expenditure will be affected by agentic arbitrage. That equals about 20% of total enterprise software as a service (SaaS) expenditure in 2030.
Gartner explained that agentic arbitrage occurs as AI agents perform tasks across multiple systems, reducing the need for users to interact one by one with existing software interfaces.
George Brocklehurst, a Gartner analyst, said, "Agentic AI is changing the economic structure of software," and added, "Agentic systems bypass user experience (UX)-centric traditional applications to deliver outcomes directly, making software less visible."
He added, "This weakens the link between user growth and sales growth for many enterprise software vendors."
He further predicted that this shift will reshape how software is built, priced, and consumed. Analyst Brocklehurst said, "This phenomenon will redefine the fragmentation of the SaaS market as we know it—the 'Saaspocalypse,'" and added, "SaaS will not disappear but will evolve into other forms, and this shift will be both a threat and an opportunity for incumbents and new challengers alike."
Gartner advised that to maintain competitiveness and secure growth opportunities, existing software corporations should integrate agentic AI capabilities into their products to strengthen their position in the value chain, and secure and retain customer-specific knowledge as well as raw data.
Vice President Brocklehurst said, "As organizations make greater use of agentic AI systems, the user interface (UI) can no longer be a differentiator," and added, "Existing SaaS market share will be eroded by incumbents, and new entrants will capture it through agentic platforms that are not confined to particular industries."