Who builds your software now, and who earns from it

What we're tracking

• •The people building software no longer all write code For most of the history of business software, building an application meant employing people who could write code. If you could not, you bought something off the shelf and lived with its shape. That line is moving. Zapier reported that 34% of people shipping software using AI tools now have no formal programming background [1]. The piece notes that the technology has moved past the point where only trained developers benefited from it: "AI was impressive enough when skilled developers could use ChatGPT to troubleshoot code"
• •An AI supplier is now among the largest earners in software When you choose a tool, you are also choosing a supplier, and it helps to know how big and how fast-growing that supplier is. SaaStr made the scale concrete: it argued that by year-end one AI company will out-earn every public software company except one very large incumbent, noting that "Anthropic exited 2025 at roughly $9 billion in run-rate revenue" [2].
• •Layoffs, and the question sitting underneath them The same day brought news that a large technology firm cut staff. TechCrunch reported that "Microsoft cut around 4,800 roles, or 2.1% of its global workforce, on Monday — the latest in a series of layoffs that's stoking fears of AI replacing jobs" [3], and that the reductions would fall hardest on its Xbox and commercial sales groups [3].
• •Tools that can join the meeting you already run A quieter announcement carried a lesson that outlasts any single feature. Google Workspace said that "You can now join video conferences on Google Meet hardware via SIP through a Pexip interop gateway" [4], and that this lets people "join meetings hosted on any SIP-compatible platform directly from their Meet rooms" [4].
• •Software that has to grow with you The last item is about fit over time. Xero published a note on building its product to scale with growing businesses, and it opened on the moment most buyers underestimate: "There's a moment in the life of a growing business that rarely makes it into the headline" [5] — the point at which things are going well and the complexity of running the business starts to outpace the tools that got it there.
• •What the day adds up to The thread across all five items is the same one that ran through yesterday's briefing: AI is lowering the cost of building software while raising the stakes of the suppliers you depend on. For a business choosing tools, none of this changes the fundamentals. Decide what work is worth automating, know how hard it would be to leave any supplier you lean on, buy tools that talk to each other through open standards, and choose for the size you are growing into. The technology moves quickly. The questions a careful buyer should ask do not.