Software is experiencing its ‘most exciting moment’ as AI fears it will hit stock prices

box “This is the most exciting moment we’ve ever experienced” in the cloud software vendor’s 20-year history, CEO Aaron Levie said. Wall Street doesn’t see it that way.

The stock is down 17% in 2026 after starting the year with its biggest monthly decline since 2023. It’s been caught up in a software boom as investors exit stocks of companies they fear will be displaced by the rise of artificially intelligent agents.

of WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund It has plunged about 20% so far in 2026 and is down 6.5% this week. Many companies are in much worse situations than Box. hubspot It has fallen 39% this year, following a 42% drop in 2025. figma This year it has fallen by 40%, but atlassian It has decreased by 35%, Shopify It fell 29%.

The generative AI boom that started a little more than three years ago with OpenAI’s ChatGPT has quickly permeated the business realm with new tools that allow you to create apps, websites, and other digital products in seconds or minutes using a few text prompts. Levie describes the “cognitive dissonance” occurring within the industry, as companies recognize the power of new technology to enhance their products, while also taking into account widespread external fears that AI will disrupt them.

“This idea of ​​where companies tend to spend their resources, time and energy is somewhat misconceived,” Levy said Wednesday on CNBC’s “The Exchange.”

He argued that companies prefer to pay for products and services from vendors that specialize in back-office software and customer relationship management systems, rather than purchasing them themselves and taking on all the responsibilities that come with them.

sales force CEO Marc Benioff has made similar claims, telling CNBC’s Jim Cramer in December that “we have all the customer data” and that Agentforce, which automates sales and customer service workflows, is “the fastest growing product in Salesforce’s history.”

Bill McDermott CEO ServiceNowHe said last week, after the company reported healthy quarterly results and guidance, that market concerns were misplaced and that the company’s products serve as a “semantic layer that makes AI ubiquitous within the enterprise.”

Former CEO Dan Springer docusign Now running Ironclad, a legitimate software startup, he says ServiceNow’s services cannot be replaced with AI, at least not yet.

“I’ve never seen anything made that attacks that series,” Springer said.

Still, Salesforce and ServiceNow have both lost about a quarter of their value this year.

A big catalyst for the accelerating stock price decline was the progress of Anthropic, the developer of the Claude AI model. On Friday, Anthropic announced new legal, financial, and product marketing features for its Claude Cowork productivity tool and released a plugin under an open source license that allows for customization.

Claude goes head-to-head with OpenAI’s GPT model. Google Gemini is focused on selling subscriptions to large enterprises looking to widely deploy AI.

“I’m in awe of this technology,” Celso Pinto, senior director of products at software company The Access Group, said in a Monday X post. He said he used Cowork and the software development product Claude Code to review marketing copy, fix technical issues and create legal documents.

Public and private markets have determined that infrastructure companies and top model developers are likely to be the AI ​​winners and software companies to be the losers, regardless of how strong the business looks today.

Earlier this month, Anthropic signed a term sheet for a $10 billion funding round at a valuation of $350 billion. OpenAI is reportedly aiming for a valuation of more than $800 billion, and Google’s parent company also alphabet The company’s stock has soared more than 60% over the past year, pushing its market capitalization to $4 trillion.

Software executives aren’t the only ones trying to counter the prevailing narrative. Many tech investors and analysts say they don’t see IT buyers on the ground abandoning their software solutions. Stifel analysts wrote in a report on HubSpot last month that the CRM company’s business looks good.

“Despite widespread concerns about AI-related disruption, none of our partners mentioned near-term AI-related layoffs or seat disruption,” the analysts wrote, recommending the stock to buy.

Covered by Kantar analysts Monday.com wrote in a note this week that the project management software provider is a “profitable growth company benefiting from long-term growth trends driven by digital and AI collaboration.” They rate the stock a buy and believe a 29% decline this year creates an “attractive situation.”

Byron Deeter, a longtime cloud software investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, takes a buy-on-the-buy approach.

“Chaos creates opportunity!” Dieter wrote in a post about X on Wednesday. “There is now a lot of money coming to people who believe in making the right bets on private and public software.”

At Box, where Dieter was an early investor, the 41-year-old co-founder and CEO says software providers need to rapidly adopt AI to stay relevant, even if investors’ concerns are overblown.

“All software companies have to be constantly on guard because of AI,” Levy said. “It’s certainly forcing all incumbents to go the extra mile for their customers. I think this is incredible for the market and for IT buyers.”

—CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

Remember: Software departments lose about 30% of their value in three months. What’s behind the sales trends?