In partnership with
AI Insights in 4 Minutes from Global AI Thought Leader Mark Lynd
Welcome to another edition of the AI Bursts Newsletter. Let’s dive into the world of AI with an essential Burst of insight.
✨ THE BURST
A single, powerful AI idea, analyzed rapidly.
💡The Idea
The business model of software is collapsing. For two decades, we bought "SaaS Seats" (a license for a human to do work). In 2026, we are shifting to "Agent-as-a-Service" (AaaS) renting the outcome of the work itself. Goldman Sachs and Gartner predict a massive pivot where companies stop paying $100/month for a CRM login and start paying $0.50 per "Qualified Lead" generated by an autonomous Sales Agent.
❓Why It Matters
This is the end of "Shelfware." In the SaaS era, vendors got paid whether you used the tool or not. In the AaaS era, vendors only get paid if the agent does the job. This aligns incentives perfectly but creates a brutal new reality for tech vendors: if your AI agent gets stuck or hallucinates, your revenue drops to zero. For the buyer, it transforms IT spend from a fixed "OpEx Tax" into a variable "Cost of Goods Sold."
🚀 The Takeaway
Renegotiate your 2026 contracts. If a vendor tries to sell you an "AI Copilot" tacked onto a seat license, refuse. Demand Outcome-Based Pricing (e.g., pay-per-resolution for customer service, pay-per-bug-fix for coding). Force your vendors to take the technology risk. If their agent is truly autonomous, they should be happy to charge you for the labor, not the login.
🛠️ THE TOOLKIT
The high-leverage GenAI stack you need to know this week.
The Seller: Sierra AI (co-founded by Bret Taylor) is pioneering "Outcome-Based Pricing" for customer service, charging enterprises only when an agent successfully resolves a ticket without human intervention.
The Platform: Salesforce Agentforce has introduced new "Agent Credits" consumption models, allowing companies to scale their digital workforce up and down instantly during peak seasons without buying annual seats.
The Meter: Orb is a new "Agent Billing" infrastructure tool that allows companies to audit exactly what their rented agents are doing, ensuring you aren't billed for "hallucinated" work or failed tasks.
Mark’s 30 AI Predictions for 2026 Based on Hundreds of Customer Interactions
📊 AI SIGNAL
Your 30-second scan of the AI landscape.
Market Shift: Gartner predicts that by 2028, 45% of IT interactions will use Agents as the primary interface, effectively replacing the "Dashboard Era" of B2B SaaS with a "Service-as-Software" model.
Tech Trend: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declares that traditional apps will "collapse" into the AI tier, predicting that future software will be "Agentic First"—databases wrapped in logic, not user interfaces.
Forecast: Kasmo’s 2026 Trends report warns that legacy SaaS vendors sticking to seat-based pricing will face mass churn as competitors offer "pay-for-performance" agents that undercut human labor costs by 90%.
🧠 BYTE-SIZED FACT
The word "Robot" comes from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor." It was introduced in the 1920 play R.U.R., which ends with the robots rebelling because they were tired of doing all the work, a fitting etymology for the "Agent-as-a-Service" era.
🔊 DEEP QUOTE
"We are moving from tools that help us work, to tools that do the work." — Satya Nadella
Till next time,
For deep-dive analysis on cybersecurity and AI, check out my popular newsletter, The Cybervizer Newsletter
Find out why 100K+ engineers read The Code twice a week
Staying behind on tech trends can be a career killer.
But let’s face it, no one has hours to spare every week trying to stay updated.
That’s why over 100,000 engineers at companies like Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.
Here’s why it works:
No fluff, just signal – Learn the most important tech news delivered in just two short emails.
Supercharge your skills – Get access to top research papers and resources that give you an edge in the industry.
See the future first – Discover what’s next before it hits the mainstream, so you can lead, not follow.