SaaStr: Can You Really Grow in 2026 If You Aren't Tapping Into AI Budget? — AI Spending Shifts From Innovation Fund to Core IT

SaaStr·medium signal

SaaStr's analysis argues that AI budgets stopped being 'innovation fund' line items and became core IT spending in 2025, with Gartner forecasting global AI spending approaching $1.5 trillion in 2025 and enterprise software/infrastructure alone hitting nearly $500 billion in 2026. The implication for SaaS founders: if your product doesn't tap into AI budget line items, you're competing for shrinking traditional software budgets. AI-native companies moving 3.6X faster through the product lifecycle (per ICONIQ data) are capturing these expanding AI budgets while legacy SaaS fights over a contracting pool.