Software spending is hitting record highs in 2026, but the money is not flowing evenly. Total global software spend is on track to grow 15% this year – the fastest rate in over a decade – yet a significant portion of traditional SaaS companies are watching their growth stall or reverse. For CRM and GTM professionals, this split tells a very important story about where enterprise budgets are actually going, and what that means for how you sell, market, and build customer relationships going forward.
The Great Divide in Software Spending
Gartner projects global software spend will rise from $1.2 trillion to $1.4 trillion in 2026. On paper, that sounds like a rising tide that lifts all boats. In reality, the opposite is happening. According to analysis from Saastr, roughly half of public SaaS companies are still experiencing declining revenue growth or outright contraction, even as the overall market expands at its fastest pace in a decade.
The explanation is straightforward: the new budget is going to AI-native platforms, not to legacy SaaS tools. Buyers are consolidating, cutting redundant point solutions, and redirecting spend toward platforms that deliver measurable productivity gains through AI. Companies that built their businesses on workflow automation, static dashboards, or basic integrations are finding that customers no longer see the same value they once did.
Total software spend is growing 15% in 2026 – the fastest in a decade – yet public software companies are trading at their lowest multiples in years. The divergence between AI-native winners and traditional SaaS losers has never been wider.
For CRM vendors and the teams that rely on them, the implication is direct. Platforms that have embedded AI deeply into their core workflows – think predictive lead scoring, automated pipeline management, AI-generated outreach, and intelligent customer data enrichment – are taking budget share. Those that have bolted on AI as a feature rather than building it into the foundation are struggling to justify renewals. Stay up to date with how leading platforms are positioning themselves in our CRM News section.
Anthropic’s Rise and What It Signals for CRM Buyers
Nothing illustrates this shift more starkly than Anthropic’s trajectory. The AI company exited 2025 at roughly $9 billion in annualised revenue. By February 2026, that figure had already climbed to $14 billion. At its current growth rate, Anthropic is on course to out-earn every public software company except Microsoft by the end of this year.
Why does this matter for CRM professionals? Because a large share of that revenue is coming from enterprise deals where businesses are embedding large language models directly into their customer-facing and internal workflows. Sales teams are using Claude to draft personalised outreach at scale. Support teams are routing and resolving tickets faster. Marketing teams are generating and testing content in hours rather than weeks.
The CRM platforms best positioned for this environment are those building native integrations with foundational AI models – or building their own. If your current CRM stack is not actively developing or deepening AI capabilities, that gap will compound quickly. Use our CRM Tools Directory to compare how leading platforms are investing in AI features right now.
HubSpot’s AEO Play – A Blueprint for GTM Teams
While the macro story is about AI spend and SaaS consolidation, there is a tactical signal worth paying close attention to. HubSpot recently reported a 1,850% increase in leads by optimising for Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) – the practice of structuring content so it surfaces in AI-generated search results from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.
This is not a minor SEO update. It represents a fundamental shift in how B2B buyers discover software and make purchase decisions. If your GTM motion relies heavily on traditional search traffic and inbound content, this is a direct warning that the channel is changing fast. The teams winning right now are:
- Restructuring content around specific questions buyers ask AI assistants
- Publishing authoritative, structured data that AI engines can easily parse and cite
- Building topical depth across their core categories rather than chasing broad keyword volume
- Treating AI answer engines as a distribution channel, not just a search trend
HubSpot’s result is an outlier in scale, but the underlying strategy is replicable. For demand generation and RevOps teams, now is the time to audit your content strategy with AEO in mind. Our CRM Guides cover how to adapt your inbound strategy for AI-driven discovery.
What CRM and RevOps Teams Should Do Now
The market is bifurcating, and the window to position on the right side of that divide is narrowing. AI-native platforms are capturing disproportionate budget share, foundational AI companies are scaling faster than almost anything the software industry has seen, and the channels GTM teams have relied on for pipeline generation are being rewritten in real time.
The CRM and RevOps professionals who will come out ahead are those who treat 2026 not as a year to optimise existing playbooks, but as a year to rethink the fundamentals – which platforms sit at the centre of their stack, how their buyers are discovering and evaluating solutions, and whether their tech investments are aligned with where software value is actually being created today.