AI COGS Force a Margin 'Hard Reset': Inference Costs Pressure the Canonical 80% SaaS Gross Margin
Janus Henderson·low signal
Janus Henderson frames 2026 as a 'hard reset' in which the AI transition — not SaaS's death — is the story, as inference COGS compress the canonical 80%+ software gross margin and sort vendors into those that can absorb AI costs and those that become structurally impaired. This is the financial 'why' beneath the week's pricing shifts: usage- and outcome-based models are partly a mechanism to pass compute costs through to customers. CFOs rethinking the P&L is the upstream cause of the seat-to-usage migration.