AI Disruption, Funding Surge, Inflation, Cars
Key Points
- Clar is replacing its Salesforce SaaS stack with in‑house AI‑driven solutions, signaling that companies may start building internal alternatives to costly third‑party software.
- This move puts pressure on traditional SaaS vendors like Salesforce to continuously demonstrate value in an AI‑enhanced environment or risk being displaced.
- Despite the trend toward internal AI, the market still embraces external AI platforms, exemplified by Glean’s rapid growth and a new $260 million Series E round that lifted its valuation to $4.6 billion.
- Glean positions itself as an “AI‑native” knowledge engine that aggregates and summarizes data from email, wikis, Slack, and other sources, aiming to become the go‑to collaboration tool of 2024.
Full Transcript
# AI Disruption, Funding Surge, Inflation, Cars **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdYcDytORck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdYcDytORck) **Duration:** 00:06:32 ## Summary - Clar is replacing its Salesforce SaaS stack with in‑house AI‑driven solutions, signaling that companies may start building internal alternatives to costly third‑party software. - This move puts pressure on traditional SaaS vendors like Salesforce to continuously demonstrate value in an AI‑enhanced environment or risk being displaced. - Despite the trend toward internal AI, the market still embraces external AI platforms, exemplified by Glean’s rapid growth and a new $260 million Series E round that lifted its valuation to $4.6 billion. - Glean positions itself as an “AI‑native” knowledge engine that aggregates and summarizes data from email, wikis, Slack, and other sources, aiming to become the go‑to collaboration tool of 2024. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdYcDytORck&t=0s) **AI Drives SaaS Replacement Trend** - The segment explains that Clar’s shift from Salesforce to an in‑house AI customer‑service system illustrates a growing corporate push to replace costly SaaS contracts with proprietary AI solutions, warning traditional SaaS providers to prove continued value. ## Full Transcript
three big pieces of news today all
around Tech we're going to talk about
software and AI we're going to talk
about the inflation news and we're going
to talk about cars so software first if
you've been following the story with AI
the thing to remember is that there is a
huge question right now around the
extent to which a company will replace a
software stack they pay for using a
software as a service business model
with something they build in-house well
clar has started to do that they put out
a press release a few months ago saying
that they were saving 700 CS jobs
because they had in-house AI deflection
for CS queries now they're saying
they've replaced Salesforce that's a big
deal because Salesforce is more or less
the biggest the most essential the first
software as a service like if you think
of software as a service Mark Benny off
invented that business model more or
less so they're getting replaced at
clarum and it makes you wonder can other
companies see that press release and
start following suit I bet you right now
there are a bunch of CEOs calling up
their CTO this morning and saying do
that this is an expensive
contract so we will see but it's
definitely a warning sign to companies
like Salesforce that they need to
continue to show value in the age of AI
That's disproportionate or they will get
built out and
replaced it's not all bad news for
software though because you see a couple
of really interesting signals in the
market that the push toward AI
internally does not mean that companies
won't grab external Solutions if that's
what's appropriate and I want to call
out a consumer facing or small business
facing one as well as a big business
facing one that's more like Salesforce
so for the big business first glean got
their second multi hundred million fund
raise this year so they started out in
February with a $200 million raise at
2.2 billion and now uh they're raising
200 60 million at a 4.6 billion
valuation so they went from I I guess it
was a $2.4 billion dollar valuation
increase in just a few months here
they're absolutely blowing up and what's
interesting is they position themselves
as AI native they are being treated as
AI native by the market they're solving
a knowledge problem that has been
sticking with companies for decades
Generations where you can't find what it
was and like that's what slack sort of
promised to do but slack isn't
innovating fast enough in the AI space
to really solve this and gleen is
basically positioning itself as you can
actually find what you need to find
across email Wiki slack everything and
get an AI powered
summary well they're doing very well and
the funny thing is they were founded
back in 2007 and so even though they're
positioned as AI native now it has been
a long runway for them this this uh 260
million is a Series E so they have been
patient and they have built for a long
time to get to where they are and now
they're just blowing up they're going to
be the zoom of 2024 right if you
remember Zoom back in 2020 just
absolutely went through the roof the
other one I want to call attention to is
much earlier in the process this is a YC
company called proost Ai and the reason
I call it out is not because it has as
much of a true proven track record as
glean does at this point but because it
highlights that you can get software
that is AI native that goes after
smaller businesses as well and so in
this case proost AI is basically
automating the Airbnb host experience
where you can like automate a lot of
communication with your guests you can
automate a lot of the servicing
communication
Etc there's a Airbnb is now big enough
that you can have an entire startup that
is just focused on figuring out the
logistics of the hospitality industry
that professional hoteliers have been
sorting out for a long time with staff
and I think that's really interesting
and it gives them room to get into the
rest of hospitality if they can make
this scale so it's not all bad news for
software but let's move on let's go to
the inflation print so online grocery
sales fell
3.7% in the month of August it's the
biggest decrease on records since
records start being kept for online
groceries in 2014 and I call it out
because the Fed was already looking at
an interest rate cut this is going to be
another data point that fuels the
speculation that the FED is headed for
an interest rate cut and that matters
because
the IPO rate since the interest rate
rise in 2022 has gone through the floor
in 2021 we had 140 exits by IPO from the
mostly from the tech industry in 2022 to
2024 year-to date inclusive we have had
14
14 10% in three years of what we had
just in 2021 now 2021 was a big year but
it calls out how tough it's been for
startups to exit and if you can't exit
the entire Venture Capital model kind of
goes into deep freeze and that is what
we have seen as far as capital
allocation which trickles into jobs and
everything else and so a lot of what
I've been watching is when will the FED
start to loosen the capital so VCS start
to get hungry again it doesn't mean it's
going to go back to 2020 and 2021 right
away but it does mean that there may be
a restart of that funding model maybe
the IPOs start to come back Etc so I'm
keeping an eye on that last but not
least someone
uh dove into wh's crash driving data and
called out it was a really interesting
analysis they called out that a lot of
the crashes reported by weo are crashes
where their self-driving vehicle was
rammed by another human by by a human
driver wayo self-driving so it's not
another human driver right uh the
machine car was s rammed by a human
driver and that when you take that into
account weo is even safer than you might
realize in fact the estimate is that weo
is UH 60 to 70% safer than human drivers
at this point net net so there's a lot
of lives to be saved by rolling out way
more more
broadly and what's interesting is the
reason it's 60 to 70% is because we have
a really hard time actually estimating
the Baseline human crash rate there's a
lot of really interesting like
discussion of that I'll link the article
underneath the YouTube but there you go
that's your news lot on software a
little bit on uh inflation and IPOs in
the exit market and a little bit on cars
just at the end what did I miss