When the model is the easy part of buying software

What we're tracking

• •The value is moving from the model to the implementation The most consequential news for anyone buying business software is a shift in where the money and the effort are expected to go. TechCrunch reports that a new company, Ode, has launched on the premise that the next large AI business is not another model but the work of putting models to use inside real organisations [1]. The framing is that embedding engineers directly inside enterprises — people whose job is to make the technology actually run against a company's own data and processes — is what unlocks adoption.
• •An hour of an AI agent, priced in dollars SaaStr published a short, pointed piece today about the running cost of a capable AI agent. The headline figure is that an hour with their top agent came to $13.42, and the argument is that no human can be hired for that rate [2]. The account describes their AI agent as having wrapped a focused work session — a discrete block of real output measured against a real bill.
• •Who is your AI agent allowed to be As software starts to act on your behalf, a quieter problem surfaces: identity. When a person logs in, you know who they are and what they may touch. When an AI agent does work, it needs credentials too — and those credentials can proliferate quietly, with no clear owner. TechCrunch reports that Oak has emerged from stealth with $60 million in seed funding to work on identity management, in a market it links to the rise of AI agents [3].
• •Working with people outside your walls Not every announcement today is about AI. Google Workspace shipped a practical change: group conversations in Google Chat can now include people from outside your organisation [4]. The company's reasoning is plain — as it puts it, "For many teams, it's essential to be able to work in real-time with partners from outside your organization."
• •Is software dead? No — but winning is harder Finally, a wider piece of perspective. SaaStr sat down with investor Rory O'Driscoll, who has been backing software companies for more than thirty years, and the conclusion in the title is worth sitting with: software is not dead, it "Just Got a Lot Harder to Win" [5].