Ever since Microsoft took a multi-billion-dollar bet on OpenAI's technology, the tech giant has seemingly shifted its focus to generative AI and practically integrated it across its tech stack.
At this point, Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, is probably synonymous with AI, following his recent commitment to invest $80 billion in building data centers to support the company’s AI advancements. This comes after OpenAI unveiled its $500 billion Stargate project, aimed at reducing its reliance on Microsoft for cloud computing resources.
In case you missed it, the executive appeared in a podcast interview with Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner, and as you might have guessed, most of the conversation was centered on AI. Perhaps more interestingly, Nadella indicated that the Agentic AI era might lead to the collapse of traditional SaaS (Software as a Service) business applications.
CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella: We are going to go pretty aggressively and try and collapse it all. Hey, why do I need Excel? I think the very notion that applications even exist, that's probably where they'll all collapse, right? In the Agent era. RIP to all software related jobs. from r/agi
According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s a very, very, very important question, the SaaS applications, or biz apps. So let me just speak of our own dynamics. The approach at least we’re taking is, I think, the notion that business applications exist, that’s probably where they’ll all collapse, right in the agent era, because if you think about it, right, they are essentially CRUD databases with a bunch of business logic. The business logic is all going to these agents, and these agents are going to be multi repo CRUD, right? So they’re not going to discriminate between what the back end is. They’re going to update multiple databases, and all the logic will be in the AI tier, so to speak. And once the AI tier becomes the place where all the logic is, then people will start replacing the back ends, right?”
The executive argued that AI agents are going to be "multi-repo CRUD." As such, they won't discriminate between what the backend is. Instead, they will update multiple databases. He further added that all the business logic users seek from traditional SaaS business apps will be available in the AI tier.
Microsoft CEO seemingly indicated that most SaaS apps provide simple yet valuable services. They store data and run CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) operations on them. This should ideally make it easy to integrate AI into the business app to handle the intelligence aspect.
"Hey, why do I need Excel?," indicated Nadella. "Like, interestingly enough, one of the most exciting things for me is Excel with Python is like GitHub with Copilot, right?"
The executive says users can use Microsoft Excel alongside Copilot. "It is like having a data analyst," added Nadella.
According to Microsoft's CEO:
"A great way to reconceptualize Excel. And at some point you could say, Hey, I’ll generate all of Excel. Uh, and that is also true. After all, there’s a code interpreter, right? So therefore you can generate anything. Um, and so, yes, I think there will be disruption, but so the way we are approaching at least our M365 stuff is one is, you know, Build Copilot as that organizing layer, UI for AI, get all agents, including our own agents."
To that end, it remains to be seen if users will embrace AI into their workflows, potentially prompting them to pull the plug on traditional SaaS apps.
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