CROSS-CATEGORY: Vertical AI Agents Show 3-5x Higher Retention Than Horizontal SaaS — Construction, Legal, Healthcare All Accelerating

TechCrunch·high signal

Multiple data points converge: vertical AI agents (Sierra for customer service, Harvey/Legora for legal, Hippocratic for healthcare, Rebar for construction) now show 3-5x higher retention than horizontal SaaS tools. Legora hit $5.6B valuation with $600M in funding from NVIDIA and Atlassian; Rebar raised $14M to analyze construction blueprints with computer vision; Coral raised $12.5M for healthcare admin. The pattern: industry-specific agents with proprietary workflow knowledge are growing 28% YoY — 3x faster than horizontal software in the same categories.