A $5B fund manager went on Bloomberg to say the seat license is under pressure, and ServiceNow confirmed half its net new revenue already isn't seats.

Parnassus CIO Todd Ahlsten argued Salesforce and ServiceNow face structural pressure because AI lets customers grow output without hiring the employees who needed licenses. The counter-evidence both offer is real: Salesforce says its ten heaviest Agentforce users grew total spend 1.5x year over year and that Sales and Service still showed seat growth, while ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told the WSJ roughly half of net new business revenue now comes from non-seat models. (Yahoo Finance) Bain's analysis of 30+ SaaS vendors shipping generative AI found about 65% went hybrid, layering usage or feature charges on top of seats rather than replacing them. Hybrid is the answer nobody wanted, and it's what's actually happening.