This CEO said stock-based compensation, or SBC, is too high for SaaS companies now. Future revenue growth may not be as strong anymore, so SBC has to come down, and the financial discipline of the software industry has to improve. This year, SaaS companies will have to cut a lot of employees to adjust, he predicted.
Our view is that large-language model digital agents can effectively do a non-immaterial portion of the work currently provided by 20-30k independent agents across the United States. The core of the firm's bearish thesis centers on a massive pool of routine, low-complexity insurance policies.
A major problem for software companies is that their opponent is largely hypothetical. Even if both companies report blockbuster earnings, there's still the counterargument that AI will eventually eat their lunch.
Warning to executives: Don't get too comfortable in your corner office. Nearly one in nine CEOs was replaced last year, the highest rate since the financial crisis, and CFO turnover hit a seven-year high, according to new data from Russell Reynolds Associates. The replacements are younger and greener. More than 80% of the 168 incoming CEOs were first-timers with no prior experience running public companies.
If that feels familiar, that's because we have been here before. In November 2022 ChatGPT made investors question even whether companies like Google had a future. In January 2025, China's DeepSeek challenged the entire American approach to AI, which relied on costly cutting-edge hardware. The stocks of AI-powerhouses like NVIDIA took a beating. To say that both Google and NVIDIA have been doing fine since then would be an understatement.
DoorDash ( Nasdaq: DASH), Figma ( NYSE: FIG) and eBay ( Nasdaq: EBAY) all report calendar Q4 2025 earnings tonight after the close. The companies represent starkly different corners of the internet economy: one powering local delivery at scale, another reinventing a 30-year-old marketplace with AI, and a third a recent SaaS IPO. Yet, each stock has been under the same pressure recently. Fears around AI disruption have sent each of these company's stock south.
Corey duBrowa spent much of his career advising some of the world's most scrutinized leaders-from Marc Benioff at Salesforce to Sundar Pichai at Google. Now, as CEO of global communications firm Burson, he's helping executives navigate a charged marketplace shaped by AI disruption, ICE activity, and nonstop reputational risk. He explains why reputation remains one of the most powerful (and most misunderstood) assets in business, and how leaders should decide whether, when, and how to speak up.
Cisco Systems ( NASDAQ: CSCO) has dropped 9.4% over the past week. That's seven times worse than the S&P 500's 1.28% decline over the same period. Yet Wall Street analysts still see the stock climbing to an average target of $88.81, implying roughly 16% upside from current levels. The question: is this a buying opportunity or are analysts missing something the market already knows?
COPENHAGEN, Denmark-(BUSINESS WIRE)- Caliber, a stakeholder intelligence platform helping organizations build and protect trust, released its inaugural Stakeholder Intelligence Report, revealing global trends in brand, reputation, and data-driven communications. As economic anxiety, AI disruption, and geopolitical uncertainty intensify, leaders across industries are making higher-stakes decisions under conditions of compressed trust and heightened reputational risk. This report equips executives with data and actionable insights to support decision-making in 2026 and beyond.
If there's one truth freelancers learn sooner or later, it's this: The economy doesn't care about your pipeline needs. Markets shift, industries contract, new technologies emerge and budgets get tighter without warning. The ups and downs aren't personal, but how you respond to them can completely change the trajectory of your business.
Abandon your focus on keyword optimization and start optimizing for citations Your human talent should focus on risk removal instead of pitching By the time a human conversation happens, the decision is often 80% to 100% made Businesses no longer find value in standard blog posts, which AI technology has made obsolete The traditional B2B growth engine is now showing signs of "leaking oil." The predictable path to revenue has followed a straight line for many years.
"Even if there is a 20% chance of this happening, people deserve to know and have time to prepare." The people in tech who previously warned about AI's impact were mostly speaking to others in the industry, he said. Shumer said he wanted something that spoke to his dad, a lawyer who is just a few years from retirement and is hopeful he can run out the clock on the potential massive change on the horizon.
Cloud computing stocks are trading like they've hit a wall. WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund ( NASDAQ:WCLD) dropped 30.5% over the past year to $28.60, a stark reversal from the sector's pandemic-era dominance. This divergence from the S&P 500 ( NYSEARCA:SPY)'s 14.4% gain reflects investor skepticism about whether emerging cloud software companies can maintain their business models as AI reshapes the technology landscape.
Your business model worked in 2024. It might be dead by December 2026. AI tools are getting cheaper, faster, and more capable every quarter. The companies that survive will be the ones who build moats that machines cannot cross. Most founders think they have time to figure this out. They believe their expertise or relationships will protect them. They scroll past AI news thinking it applies to someone else's industry. That comfortable denial is the fastest path to irrelevance.
The cryptocurrency is currently suffering from weak overall sentiment in the broader stock market amid the battle for the AI throne and tumbling liquidity. Futures traders are retreating further, and spot ETF flows remain unsustainable. Meanwhile, the risk of a broader all-out war in the Middle East, combined with the anticipation of new economic data and corporate earnings, is keeping traders on edge.
Shares of Carvana ( NYSE:CVNA) trade near $460 today, and amazing rally from just $309 a share on November 21st. Despite the run, retail investors across Reddit and X aren't convinced. It's not just Carvana either, retail investors seem uniformly very bearish of the space. CarGurus ( NASDAQ:CARG) and Cars.com ( NYSE:CARS) face identical bearish sentiment scores of 8 to 12 out of 100. Those are among the lowest scores we currently track on 24/7 Wall St and are specific to this subsector.
For months, she had been fighting fires and chasing one AI update after another, rewriting roadmaps every week as new tools arrived. That same morning, she had stepped out of a call where the CFO confirmed that a restructuring would almost certainly eliminate many of her team members' roles. Minutes later, one of her direct reports had asked her, "Am I going to have a job in six months?"
"The foundations CMOs once relied on are eroding fast, from how teams operate to how brands earn trust and drive growth," Sharon Cantor Ceurvorst and Ewan McIntyre write in Leadership Vision for 2026: Chief Marketing Officer." "In 2026, CMOs face a pivotal choice: Bolt AI onto legacy systems and risk irrelevance, or embrace the opportunity to build what comes next."
As 2026 approaches, the landscape for entrepreneurs is shifting fast, defined by AI disruption, rising costs, cautious investors and more demanding customers. Yet for British entrepreneur and investor Matt Haycox, the fundamentals of building a strong business remain the same: clarity, cash flow and character. 'Trends change every year,' he says. 'Principles don't. If you can manage money, manage people and keep promises, you'll still win, whether it's 2006 or 2026.'
Professional services-lawyers, accountants, management consultants like myself-the ones who actually process, analyze, and deal with a lot of data, those are the skills that can be replaced by AI and agentic AI," said Anne Lim O'Brien, vice chair, partner, and global co-leader of the consumer products sector at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles.
'If you don't speak, someone will speak on your behalf.' It's a maxim that Tim Delaney holds close and one that I hear regularly from him. It is, naturally, a point well made. All brands should aim to be part of 'the conversation'. But in today's fragmented media landscape, simply speaking up is not enough to guarantee being heard. So, what's your strategy to get heard?
As hype around generative AI continues to rattle the software sector, more specialized software companies may be among the most resilient players and the most underappreciated. RBC Capital Markets wrote on Wednesday that vertical software - tools specifically designed for industries such as healthcare, insurance, and industrial design - could weather AI disruption in the near term and benefit from it in the long run.
I've always had an analytical streak, some might call it a blessing, others a curse that constantly scans for opportunities to improve how we work. Whether it's a project, product, or process, I'm wired to evaluate the good, the bad, and the ugly in search of ways to make things better. We all have blind spots, and my goal is to minimize them through continuous reflection, open dialogue, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.
The attitude that you bring to the office-and to your employees, your peers, and the people you serve alongside every day-is what ultimately will determine a lot of your success,
Agencies are being rocked by the rise of AI. The solution? Bring on more humans. No, seriously. On Tuesday, digital agency Incubeta announced its acquisition of RocketSource, a consultancy that helps advertisers understand what drives customer behavior using data science and predictive analytics. The price of the deal was not disclosed. The traditional agency business model is falling apart, according to Alex Langshur, CEO of Incubeta in the Americas, because its cost structure is being "obliterated" by AI.
He predicted software would take over large swaths of the economy, and that's exactly what happened. Books became software, and Amazon beat Barnes & Noble. Movies became software, and Netflix won. Music became software, and Spotify rules over labels. Now, we've entered a new era in which some software companies could be eaten by AI. This technology makes it easier to use and create new software, challenging established SaaS providers and upending business models.
At first, I took things a bit personally, but then when I connected with other fellow agency owners and consultants, I noticed that many of them were going through the same thing at some level, at least on the marketing side.The truth is that we're at an inflection point. The forces reinventing marketing are not merely external; they're structural. Economic shifts are the main driver, but also AI disruptions, talent trends and evolving client expectations are fundamentally altering the way value is delivered.
More recently, I introduced the Enron documentary to my daughter, and I was shocked all over again by how much that company wooed Wall Street while pursuing wild, expensive infrastructure projects. These two threads just came together in the form of a fascinating interview I just spotted: The Institute for New Economic Thinking scored an interview with famed short seller Jim Chanos recently.
