Markets
CROSS-CATEGORY: AI-Native Vertical Specialists Hit Simultaneous Inflection Points While Horizontal SaaS Investment Falls 35%
Across four unrelated SaaS categories, AI-native vertical specialists are scaling rapidly in the same window: MarTech (Hightouch, $100M ARR), Security (Vanta, $300M ARR), Finance (Campfire, $100M raised in 12 weeks), and SOC (Exaforce, $200M raised at $725M valuation). Meanwhile Crunchbase confirms horizontal SaaS investment declined 35% over 12 months. The pattern: vertical AI companies with deep domain data are the ones hitting escape velocity, while general-purpose horizontal tools face compression from both AI agents above and vertical specialists below.
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