So while AI for coding and software engineering has seen some of the most explosive start-ups, from Codeium to Loveable to Poolside to Claude and OpenAi’s own releases here and more, just as big if quieter has been the change to contact center and support.

AI has ripped through the contact center and every leader from Talkdesk to Dialpad to Zendesk to Gorgias have adopted AI as core to their platform.  And in many cases, also seen the number of human customer success reps already reduced by -20% to -30%. Already.

How far can it go though? Can AI replace almost everything a human does today in customer support?

I don’t know but perhaps what’s just as important is what customers are expecting, thinking, and buying based on.

That’s why I found 2 recent announcements pretty telling.

First, Gartner has just predicted AI will autonomously reduce support support issues by 80% and the costs for support by 30% by 2029.

SHOWCASE YOUR AI STARTUP AT SAASTR ANNUAL AND YOU COULD WIN $500K - $5M IN FUNDING FROM THE MAYFIELD AI GARAGE!

We're hosting the largest AI pitch competition of the year and partnering with Mayfield Ventures to bring you the AI Demo Stage & Pitch Competition to this year's SaaStr Annual!

If you're building the next AI breakthrough in SaaS, come pitch your startup.

Founders will be able to demo their innovations LIVE in front of the SaaStr Annual audience of leading SaaS CEOs, founders, and investors this Annual, May 13-15, SF Bay Area.

And who knows? You could be the one to take home the giant check for $500k - $5M in SAFE funding from the Mayfield AI Garage. 

The Traditional “Triple, Triple, Double, Double, Double” Rule is Dead for AI Startups.

If you’ve been in SaaS for a while, you know the classic growth rule of thumb: “Triple, Triple, Double, Double, Double.” It was the gold standard for B2B software companies scaling from $1M to $100M ARR.

But here’s the thing – AI startups are breaking this model entirely.

Take Glean and Harvey. They’re not just beating the old model; they’re shattering it. Glean grew 20x in a single year. Harvey hit 10x. The bar isn’t just higher – it’s in a different stratosphere.

So the headline is incredibly impressive.  AI Support / Agent leader Moveworks at $100m+ ARR sells to ServiceNow for $2.85 Billion, a 20x-25x ARR exit and a huge, huge price in absolute terms.

It’s ServiceNow’s largest acquisition … ever.

A huge exit. But do the investors actually make any money here? And should you care?

The answers are murky. Why? Moveworks raised $200m of its $315m in VC Capital in 2021 … at a $2.1 Billion valuation.

Add in dilution since 2021, carve-outs on the deal, etc. it’s most likely the last round investors just made their money back. A 0% gain.

$200m of the $300m+ raised came in the last round, so likely, 66% of the investor dollars made no return at all, no profit, on a $2.8 Billion exit.

This edition of SaaStr.AI is sponsored in part by Prismatic

An integration is so much more than it first appears. Even though your engineers are capable of building your them, is the effort worth the cost?

So there are categories in SaaS and B2B that AI has already utterly changed, forever.

The contact center and software coding and development are probably the top 2. Forever changed, already.

But in other categories, it’s still early days:

• Many categories in vertical SaaS are early to AI
• Many API-focused businesses have little AI
• Many fintechs and regulated products have limited AI
• The CFO’s office is often very concerned about AI, while also curious

And that’s OK and makes sense. What probably is more a worried in the latter group is if your product team isn’t taking AI seriously.

The start-ups, scale-ups and bigger tech cos I’m most worried about: the ones that aren’t truly AI Obsessed at the product level. Obsessed.

Recently, Yasir Motiwala, Head of Americas at DeepL, shared how they scaled their Americas business from 0 to 40 people while 3X’ing ARR in under 12 months.

Having previously led Twilio’s European expansion to hundreds of millions in revenue, Yasir brings battle-tested insights on what it really takes to successfully expand internationally.

A Quick Background on DeepL.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Germany, DeepL has built a language AI platform powering translation tools available both as SaaS and API offerings. With hundreds of millions of users and 100,000+ business customers globally, they’ve emerged as a leading player in the AI-powered language space.

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