AI Super Apps Are Coming — And They'll Make Your Favorite SaaS Obsolete
By Mike Kerkhoff, Founder of Context Studios
AI Super Apps are replacing traditional SaaS — and the shift is happening faster than anyone predicted. Last week, $300 billion evaporated from software stocks in a single day. Not because of a recession. Not because of a fraud scandal. Because the market finally realized what builders like us have known for months: the SaaS era is over.
We're not talking about incremental AI features bolted onto existing products. We're talking about a fundamental architectural shift — from dozens of specialized SaaS tools to unified AI super apps that do everything, better, for a fraction of the cost.
And if you're still paying $50/seat/month for a project management tool in 2026, I have bad news for you.
The $300 Billion Wake-Up Call
Let's start with the numbers, because they're staggering.
Reuters reported that software stocks lost nearly $1 trillion in value in a single week in early February 2026. Axios noted that $25 billion in software loan volume was marked at distressed levels by end of January — more than double December's figure. Thirty percent of all distressed debt in the leveraged loan market now comes from the software sector.
This isn't a correction. It's a reckoning.
For twenty years, the SaaS model worked brilliantly: take a business process, wrap it in a web app, charge per seat, per month, forever. The result? Companies now run 130+ SaaS applications on average. The average mid-market company spends $4.2 million annually on software subscriptions. And most of that software is mediocre — stitched together with Zapier integrations and prayer.
The AI super app kills this entire model.
What Is an AI Super App, Exactly?
Think of it this way: instead of logging into Slack, then Notion, then Figma, then Salesforce, then HubSpot, then Jira — you talk to one AI. It writes your content, manages your projects, designs your assets, updates your CRM, sends your emails, and analyzes your data. All in one interface. All understanding your full context.
A GlobeNewswire analysis from February 9, 2026 describes the shift perfectly: "The competitive frontier in AI is shifting. It's no longer just about model performance. It's about integration — how seamlessly AI fits into daily life."
Five trends define this new era:
- AI as a Workforce Layer — Not a tool you use, but a colleague that executes
- Platform Consolidation — Multiple capabilities unified in single ecosystems
- Generative Media at Scale — AI reshaping content production entirely
- AI in Physical Infrastructure — Beyond software into real-world services
- A Multipolar AI Economy — Innovation distributed globally, not just Silicon Valley
This isn't theory. It's happening right now. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are all racing to build exactly this — unified platforms where AI isn't a feature, it's the product.
The SaaS Categories That Die First
Not all SaaS dies equally. Here's my prediction for the kill order:
Tier 1: Already Dead (2026)
Project management tools. Asana, Monday.com, ClickUp — these are glorified to-do lists with pretty Gantt charts. An AI agent that understands your team's work, priorities, and deadlines makes these completely redundant. You don't need a board view when an AI can just tell you what to work on next and why.
Basic writing and content tools. Grammarly, Jasper, Copy.ai — they were already AI wrappers. Now the underlying models are better than the wrappers. Why pay for a middleman when Claude or GPT can write directly in your workflow?
Simple analytics dashboards. Tools that just visualize data? Dead. AI can query your data, build the visualization, and explain the insight — all in natural language.
Tier 2: Dying (2026-2027)
CRM systems. This is controversial, but hear me out. Salesforce's $300B valuation assumes companies will always need a massive database with a clunky UI to manage customer relationships. But an AI super app that automatically logs every interaction, predicts deal outcomes, and drafts follow-ups — without anyone manually updating fields — makes the traditional CRM a relic.
Email marketing platforms. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign — their value was in templates and segmentation. AI does both better, personalized to the individual recipient level, not just segments.
Design tools for non-designers. Canva disrupted Adobe by making design accessible. AI disrupts Canva by making the designer unnecessary. When you can describe what you want and get it in seconds, drag-and-drop editors become quaint.
Tier 3: Disrupted but Surviving (2027-2028)
Developer tools. GitHub, GitLab, and infrastructure tools have deep integration moats. AI makes developers 10x more productive within these tools rather than replacing them entirely.
Enterprise security. Too critical, too regulated, too liability-heavy for pure AI replacement. But AI will gut the headcount needed to operate these tools.
Vertical-specific platforms. Healthcare EMRs, legal case management, construction project management — regulation and domain complexity create barriers. But even these will be fundamentally reshaped.
The Seat-Based Pricing Apocalypse
Here's the economic reality that makes this inevitable.
The Remio analysis nails it: "The Big Three AI companies now offer generic subscriptions — often around $20 to $50 a month — that outperform specialized enterprise software costing ten times as much."
A marketing agency that once needed ten people using a complex SaaS stack can now achieve similar output with two people and AI agents. That's not a marginal efficiency gain. That's an 80% reduction in both headcount and software spend.
The seat-based model collapses because AI eliminates seats. When an agent does the work, there's no human to charge a seat license to. SaaS companies are quite literally pricing themselves out of existence.
Bain & Company's technology report confirmed this: generative and agentic AI — tools that can reason, decide, and act — represent a "fresh discontinuity" for SaaS. That's consulting-speak for "everything changes."
Why Small Studios Win This Round
Here's where it gets personal, and where I'm most opinionated.
The incumbents are trapped. Salesforce can't cannibalize its own $30B revenue stream. Adobe can't tell its Creative Cloud subscribers they don't need Photoshop anymore. Microsoft can't admit that Copilot makes half of Office redundant.
But small studios like ours? We have nothing to protect. No legacy revenue to defend. No shareholders screaming about seat-count metrics. We can build the AI-native replacements from scratch, designed around how work actually happens in 2026 — not how it happened in 2006.
This is the classic innovator's dilemma, and it's playing out in real-time. The companies with the most to lose are the least able to adapt. The companies with nothing to lose are building the future.
At Context Studios, we see this every day. We don't use project management software. We don't use a CRM. We don't use email marketing tools. Our AI systems handle all of it — and they handle it better than any SaaS tool we've ever tried. Not because AI is magic, but because unified context beats fragmented data every single time.
The $47 Billion Debt Bomb
There's a financial dimension to this that most people aren't talking about.
Many mid-market SaaS companies were acquired by private equity firms over the past five years using leveraged buyouts. The playbook was simple: buy the company, cut costs, raise prices, milk the recurring revenue. It worked when switching costs were high and alternatives were scarce.
Now those alternatives exist. Customers are churning. Revenue is declining. And the debt taken on to acquire these companies? It's going distressed. The $25 billion in distressed software loans Axios reported is just the beginning. Industry estimates suggest the total exposure could exceed $47 billion by mid-2026.
When these companies start defaulting, it won't be a gradual decline. It'll be a cascade. And the tools they provided — the ones your team depends on — will go dark with minimal notice.
If you're building on SaaS tools backed by PE-owned companies with heavy debt loads, your business continuity plan just became an AI migration plan.
What Comes Next for AI Super Apps
I'm not saying all software disappears. I'm saying the distribution model changes fundamentally.
The future isn't 130 apps. It's 3-5 AI platforms that handle 90% of what those 130 apps did, plus a handful of deep vertical tools for the remaining 10%.
The future isn't per-seat pricing. It's outcome-based or usage-based pricing where you pay for what the AI accomplishes, not how many humans are watching it work.
The future isn't feature competition. It's context competition. The platform that knows your business best — your data, your workflows, your preferences — wins. Period.
The AI Super Apps Builder's Opportunity
If you're a founder, a developer, or a small studio, this is your moment. The SaaS giants are lumbering, debt-laden, and structurally unable to pivot. The AI super app race is wide open.
Here's what we're betting on at Context Studios:
- Context is king. The app that understands your full business context — not just one slice — will always outperform specialists.
- Agents over interfaces. The future is telling an AI what you want, not clicking through menus to do it yourself.
- Small teams, big output. A two-person studio with AI agents can outproduce a twenty-person company using traditional SaaS. We're living proof.
- Build for the disruption. Don't build another SaaS tool. Build the AI-native replacement.
The SaaS era gave us incredible tools. It democratized business software. It created trillion-dollar companies. But every era ends.
The AI super app era starts now. And the builders who move first will define it.
Mike Kerkhoff is the founder of Context Studios, a Berlin-based AI development studio building the future of intelligent automation. Follow Context Studios for more takes on the AI revolution.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an AI super app?
An AI super app is a unified platform that replaces multiple specialized SaaS tools by using AI to handle diverse business functions — project management, CRM, analytics, communication — within a single interface, at a fraction of the cost of separate subscriptions.
Why did software stocks lose $300 billion in a single day?
The market realized that AI super apps can replicate the functionality of specialized SaaS products at dramatically lower cost, threatening the per-seat subscription model that sustained software valuations for two decades. Over 30% of distressed debt in the leveraged loan market now comes from the software sector.
Does this mean all SaaS companies will disappear?
Not all, but many commodity SaaS tools face existential risk. Companies with deep domain expertise, proprietary data moats, or strong network effects will likely survive. Generic tools that simply wrap a database in a web UI are most vulnerable.
How does this affect small businesses?
Positively, in most cases. The average mid-market company spends $4.2 million annually on software subscriptions. AI super apps could dramatically reduce these costs while improving productivity and lowering barriers to sophisticated business operations.
When will AI super apps become mainstream?
The transition is already underway. Major players like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are building platform capabilities that consolidate multiple tool functions. Expect significant market disruption through 2026–2027, with widespread adoption by 2028.