The mid-tier SaaS product — the one that wraps a workflow in a UI and charges per seat — is having a hard year. Above it, platforms keep absorbing features. Below it, models keep absorbing capabilities. The middle gets thinner.
Where value is migrating
Two directions, roughly. Up: into the platforms that own the data and the identity layer. Down: into the model itself, when the workflow can be expressed as a prompt against a well-typed schema.
- Distribution and data gravity moves up — into Salesforce, ServiceNow, Notion, Slack, and the major clouds.
- Reasoning and synthesis move down — into the model, accessed by anyone with a key.
- What is left in the middle is integration, opinion, and trust — and those are real, but smaller, businesses than the last decade promised.
Implications for builders
If you are starting something, the most durable place to stand is on a wedge the platforms cannot copy in a quarter and the model cannot do alone. Often that means opinionated workflows for a specific role, not horizontal tools.
