“Hey, why do I need Excel?”: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella foresees a disruptive Agentic AI era that could “aggressively” collapse SaaS apps

Since Microsoft made a significant investment in OpenAI’s technology, it appears that their primary focus has now turned towards generative AI and they have been seamlessly incorporating this technology throughout their technological infrastructure.

Currently, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, is strongly associated with artificial intelligence (AI) due to his recent pledge to spend approximately $80 billion on constructing data centers that will drive the company’s AI development forward. This announcement follows OpenAI’s reveal of its ambitious Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative designed to decrease its dependency on Microsoft for cloud computing services.

If you haven’t heard already, the executive featured in a podcast chat with Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner, and as one could surmise, the majority of their discussion revolved around AI. What might pique your interest is that Nadella hinted at the possibility that the era of Agentic AI could potentially dismantle conventional Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business applications.

CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella: We are going to go pretty aggressively and try and collapse it all. Hey, why do I need Excel? I think the very notion that applications even exist, that’s probably where they’ll all collapse, right? In the Agent era. RIP to all software related jobs. from r/agi

According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:

Indeed, this question about business applications, or SaaS apps, is quite significant. To clarify our stance, we’re focusing on the idea that these types of applications are likely to converge in what I call the ‘agent era.’ If you consider it, these applications essentially function as CRUD databases with a layer of business logic. However, as more and more business logic moves towards these intelligent agents, they will effectively become multi-repository CRUD systems. These agents won’t differentiate between backends; instead, they’ll update multiple databases. The intelligence, or the ‘AI tier,’ if you will, is where all the logic will reside. Once this AI tier becomes the hub for all logic, it’s likely that people will start replacing traditional backend systems.

The executive explained that AI agents will function as “multi-database managers for CRUD operations,” meaning they won’t distinguish between different backends. Instead, they will handle updates across multiple databases. Additionally, he pointed out that users will find all the desired business logic from traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) applications within the AI level.

It appears that the CEO of Microsoft implied that many Software as a Service (SaaS) applications offer straightforward yet essential services. These apps primarily focus on data storage and handling basic CRUD (Create, Read, Write, and Delete) operations. This setup, in theory, simplifies the process of incorporating AI into these business applications to manage their intelligent functions.

Nadella said, “What’s so great about Excel?”, to which he replied, “Well, Excel combined with Python is like GitHub paired with Copilot – pretty cool, isn’t it?

As a enthusiast, I’d say it feels like having a personal data analyst by my side, because according to Nadella, users can work with Microsoft Excel and Copilot together!

According to Microsoft’s CEO:

A creative approach to rethinking Excel could be seen as having the potential to produce all of its functionalities. This is indeed possible, given that there’s a code interpreter involved. Therefore, it’s safe to anticipate some level of disruption. Our strategy for Microsoft 365, particularly with Copilot, is to establish it as an organizing layer, a UI for AI, and encompass all our AI agents.

In other words, it’s still uncertain whether people will adopt AI as part of their daily tasks, which could lead to them replacing conventional Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications altogether.

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2025-05-09 11:55